As part of its duties as the interim government, it debated and reluctantly approved the Treaty of Versailles that codified the peace terms between Germany and the victorious Allies of World War I.

At the end of World War I, following the outbreak of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, state power lay with the Council of the People's Deputies.

It was formed on 10 November by revolutionary workers' and soldiers' councils in Berlin and headed by Friedrich Ebert of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Because of the Spartacist uprising, a general strike and the accompanying armed struggles that roiled the Reich capital from 5 to 12 January 1919, it was agreed that the National Assembly should not initially meet in Berlin.

[2] The elections for the National Assembly were the first held in Germany after the introduction of women's suffrage[3] and the lowering of the legal voting age from 25 to 20 years.

[8][9] On 10 February the Assembly passed the "Law on Provisional Reich Power" (Gesetz über die vorläufige Reichsgewalt)[10] to go into effect the following day.

His function was somewhat like that of the former emperor but with the restrictions that had been made to the constitution in October 1918, notably that war and peace were to be decided by Reich law, not by the head of state.

On 11 February the National Assembly elected the previous head of government, Friedrich Ebert (SPD), as provisional Reich president.

In his speech Scheidemann, to great applause from all parties, called the Entente Powers' terms a "dictated" or "enforced" peace (Gewaltfrieden) intended to strangle the German people.

The chairman of the liberal German People's Party (DVP) and later Reich Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann described the peace terms of the victorious powers as "an outpouring of political sadism".

Only Hugo Haase, chairman of the USPD, combined his rejection of the Entente's demands with sharp attacks on the Reich government, accusing it of having caused the current situation in the first place through its policy of enforcing a truce between political parties (Burgfriedenspolitik) during the war.

He combined his call for approval with the comment that it would be impossible for the German Reich to fulfill all the economic conditions of the treaty and regretted that it had not been possible to extract further concessions from the Entente.

On behalf of their parliamentary groups, however, they spoke in favor of acceptance, since the only alternative was the resumption of hostilities, which would lead to even worse consequences.

Eugen Schiffer, the former Reich Finance Minister, spoke on behalf of the majority of German Democratic Party deputies against accepting the treaty.

[14] The Reich government informed the Entente the same day that it would sign the treaty but with reservations as to the provisions on war guilt and the extradition of Germans to the victorious countries.

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau replied that evening on behalf of the Allied Powers that the treaty could only be accepted or rejected in its entirety.

Its four subcommittees were tasked with examining the causes of the war, what brought about its loss, what missed opportunities for peace had presented themselves, and if international laws had been broken.

He was influenced as well by Robert Redslob's theory of parliamentarianism, which called for a balance between the executive and legislative branches under either a monarch or the people as sovereign.