With the military defeat of the Hitler regime in Germany in 1945, the chapter of German history between the end of the Second and the beginning of the Third Reich takes on a new significance for the historian. In the first place, unhampered research in the field of German history from 1918 to 1933 becomes once more possible, though some very valuable sources of documents have been destroyed by the Hitler regime. Secondly, the period of the “Republican Experiment” becomes to the observer in 1947 at once more historical (now not the last but the second to the last chapter of German history) and more timely, because of possible attempts to go on from where the Republic left off and because of the temptation for the historical observer to compare 1918 and after with 1945 and after.