The German Hyperinflation History

Following the armistice of 1918 and the subsequent Paris Peace Conference, culminating in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, The First World War finally ended. The financial reparations required by the Treaty were deemed as excessively harsh by many Germans and even by some Allied commentators such as the English economist John Maynard Keynes.

This huge debt made that the new Republic of Germany (Called as Weimar Republic) with the Socialist Democratic Party leader, Friederich Ebert and his Secretary of State, Phillip Scheidemann, after Kaiser Wilhelm abdication, began to respond to growing economic uncertainty by printing increased quantities of marks, rather than by borrowing from other countries' banks. This resulted in the progressive devaluation of the currency and eventually in an exponential collapse of currency value known as hyperinflation.

In January 1923 a loaf of bread cost 250 marks. By November the price had risen to 100,000 million marks. Workers were transporting wage payments home in wheelbarrows. Photographs from this period show children playing with building blocks made from banknotes and homeowners satirically papering their walls with worthless marks. Factory workers would be paid twice daily, since by the afternoon, their morning wages would be considerably devalued. Eventually it cost more to print a banknote than the note was worth. By the end of summer, single banknotes worth 50 trillion marks were being printed.

The appearece of Gustav Stresemann would be more than key to recover Germany's growth but the 1929 great crash, made some political parties to use the Versailles Treaty as a tool to get in power.

On 1932 and 1933 the election would change Germany forever starting one of the most darkest moments in the history of Europe.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro
01:54 1918-1919: Struggle for democracy
04:05 1920-1923: Reparations and Hyperinflation
06:38 1923-1924: Reichmarks and the Dawes plan
10:02 1924-1929: The golden twenties
11:52 1929-1933: Fall of the republic
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Видео The German Hyperinflation History канала EconomicNewbie