Wirth accepted the Allies' conditions and began a policy of fulfilment – an attempt to show that Germany was unable to afford the reparations payments by making the effort to meet them.

Following the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau by members of a right-wing terrorist group in April 1922, his government attempted to confront political violence with the Law for the Protection of the Republic.

Karl Joseph Wirth was born on 6 September 1879 in Freiburg im Breisgau in what was then the Grand Duchy of Baden, a federal state of the German Empire.

In 1909, he was a co-founder and first president of the Akademische Vinzenzkonferenz (Society of Saint Vincent de Paul), a charity run by laymen for the poor.

[2] In 1914 he became a member of the Imperial Reichstag following a difficult campaign against a National Liberal candidate who was in part responsible for Wirth's life-long dislike of the "parties of property and education".

[2] In the final year of the war, Wirth increasingly often criticized the policies of the imperial government and pushed for internal reforms.

Wirth engaged with Catholic workers to keep them from becoming radicalised and spoke in favour of a leading role for the Centre Party in building a democratic Germany.

Through ties with military leadership, he also saw that funds were provided to help begin secretly rearming Germany in contravention of the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

[4] The Fehrenbach cabinet resigned on 4 May when it was unable to reach a decision on whether to accept the London Schedule of Payments, which set German war reparations at 132 billion gold marks.

By attempting to comply with the Allied demands – and thus prevent them from occupying the Ruhr – Wirth wanted to show that the annual payments of three billion gold marks were beyond Germany's means.

[2] Two members of the right-wing terrorist group Organisation Consul assassinated Matthias Erzberger on 26 August 1921 for his role in signing the Armistice of 11 November.

On 26 October, Wirth gave a government statement in which he presented his new cabinet as a combination of trusted individuals, not as members of a coalition.

[2] It increased the penalties for political assassinations and banned organisations opposed to the "constitutional republican form of government" along with their printed matter and meetings.

Wirth tried to extend his government's minority coalition to the right to include the DVP, but even his own Centre Party was becoming increasingly unhappy at having to work with the SPD, which had reunited with the more radical Independent Social Democrats (USPD) in September 1922.

[11] In 1924 Wirth joined the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, a paramilitary organization formed by the SPD, Centre and DDP for the non-violent protection of the Republic from the enemies of democracy.

In October 1931, he was pushed out of office and replaced by Wilhelm Groener on the personal initiative of President Paul von Hindenburg, who regarded Wirth as a leftist.

Bowing to the pressure of party unity, he nevertheless voted in favour of the Act with the rest of the Centre parliamentary contingent on 24 March.

In the early days of World War II, he worked with the British government and an anti-Nazi group around Admiral Wilhelm Canaris on a possible coup and peace settlement, but the talks ended when Germany invaded France in 1940.

Together with Wilhelm Elfes [de], he founded the neutralist "Alliance of Germans, Party for Unity, Peace and Freedom" (BdD) in 1953.

[14] According to a CIA document, Wirth claimed that he met with Lavrentiy Beria, chief of the Soviet secret police, in Berlin in December 1952.