Friday, April 4, 2014

How significant was the Great Depression for Germany?

The Great Depression was incredibly significant for Germany, as Germany was one of the countries hit particularly hard by it. The economic conditions in post-WWI Weimar Germany were relatively bad to begin with (rising unemployment, revenue from income tax falling, protective tariffs on German goods, and other issues), but the Great Depression made them even more dire. In the 1920s, the Weimar Republic dealt with a fragile economy and intense inflation partially due to the reparation payments (and over-printing of money) it was required to make per the Versailles Treaty that ended the war. In order to make these payments, Germany had borrowed money from the United States. When the Great Depression hit the United States, the country called for the repayment of loans made to Germany and other countries in order to attempt to stabilize their own economy. This, in turn, led Germany and these other indebted countries into their own economic depressions. The situation was exacerbated in Germany when the government elected not to increase spending and failed to spur the economy. Not only did unemployment rise sharply, reaching 25% of the workforce by 1932, but industrial output fell by about 50% and banks began to fail.
The economic instability in Germany caused by the Great Depression and the panic and impoverishment of the populace are considered by many historians to have greatly aided the rise of fascism and other extreme political ideologies, the Nazi Party, and Adolf Hitler in the next decades.
http://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/classes/33d/projects/1920s/Econ20s.htm

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-great-depression

https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/dashboard

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