The Republic couldn’t pay back the loans, and the agriculture depression grew even worse, because it was already there before the Depression kicked off; it had not been solved at all. The farm couldn’t provide enough food, so it ended up sending the whole country again into inflation, starvation, and poverty. These economic and social problems became the last straw that broke the camel's back; they brought down the Weimar government. The coalition government couldn’t take decisive action on dealing with the Depression because of its frequent change of Chancellors and its multi-party system. This over-democratic PR system of the Weimar Constitution had made people favoured the old autocratic Kaiser system.
Germanys list of problems at this time was only growing. Losing WW1 caused many problems in itself as one might expect, never mind the Treaty of Versailles that was to follow. The most prominent socio-economic effects were most naturally the casualties, 2 million Germans were killed and a further 6 million were injured, also the increasing number of civilian deaths due to hypothermia and starvation. The reason these deaths increased, was due to food and fuel shortages caused by the cold winter of 1916-17. In these winter months there were signs of the country’s morale and unity breaking, it was not helped when Germany was hit with an influenza epidemic, wiping out 20-40 million, the resistance to the disease was lowered due to decline in living conditions.
Explain why Germany was bankrupt by 1923. At first, Germany’s main problem was that its government was bankrupt. The cost of the war was so great that that all of the German gold reserves had been put towards the cause. After the Weimar Republic had made the decision to surrender, The Treaty of Versailles had made things considerably worse. It deprived Germany of wealth-earning areas, such as the coalfields in Silesia.
In this essay I will discuss if hyperinflation was completely caused by the Treaty of Versailles (1918-19). The Treaty of Versailles was responsible for thee suspension of the Ruhr, this was a place of great industrial power and brought in a lot of money to Germany. However when it was taken away from the Germans, there was halt in the industrial production which caused the collapse of the German economy. This meant that there were very few goods therefore the government printed the money. This lead to prices rocketing and the savings unfortunately became worthless.
From the start there was economic instability because of the cost of World War One and there was widespread disillusion within the German people. The public did not support the Weimar, and the administrative branch of the government, including the Judiciary, also teachers did not back it up either. Mass unemployment, damages to the infrastructure also from World War One, and the demand for reparation payments put lots of pressure on the inexperienced democracy. Not only in Germany, but all over Europe, fundamental and anti-democratic movements gained support. 2.
Before the PG came into power, the already dire economic, agrarian and social problems were getting worse and worse as the war continued and as a result, the majority of Russians opposed the war effort. This meant that from the beginning of their reign, the PGs decision to carry on with the war made them unpopular as food shortages and the economy got worse and worse. For example, by 1917, the price of bread had doubled while the rations halved from their original figures in 1914. This discontent was proven as early as April the 20th as a riot broke onto the streets demanding that Milyukov, the head of Russian foreign affairs and key war minister, was sacked. This was significant as it meant that in the times of potential danger for the PG, they couldn’t rely on the people to support them.
And to top it all off both of these empires fail for similar reasons. The Han Empire collapsed for reasons such as: undetermined emperors could no longer control powerful warlords, weak emperors let canals and roads fall into disrepair, because of the weak government people started to turn on each other and lose control. But the most important reason for the empire collapsing was because of the economic inequality. Burdened by heavy taxes and crushing debt many peasants revolted destroying the civilization. While this collapse took very little time to happen, the Roman Empire’s decline took about a century to occur.
In the Treaty, Germany was forced to accept all the blame for war, and was also forced to pay reparations amounting to about 6.6 billion dollars, which was finally all paid off in 1989. The absence of money from the German economy caused extreme hyper-inflation, which in turn caused many Germans to lose their jobs. In the infamous Great Depression of the 1920s, the US was not the only hard-hit country but Germany too and even more severely so. This was because Germany had lost over 2 million men in the war, and many of those who did come back were crippled and could not work. Germany had also lost trust with many countries who were their trading partners, causing them to lose even more money as they could not export their goods.
* Germany had hyper-inflation 1923 * Germany suffered immensely from the Great Depression as they had loaned large sums of money from USA and after the Wall Street Crash USA wanted their loans back. Political: * The German Weimar Republic political system was weak. It had numerous parties and struggled for one party to obtain a majority. * The political system did not have the public support because of the countries suffering from result of: * War * Unemployment * Weak economy with high inflation * Fear of communism Social: * The public had no faith in the political leaders after the failure of WW1. * The Treaty of Versailles caused Germany to suffer large territorial losses (1million square miles, 6million subjects) * Territorial losses meant that Germany lost precious sources of raw materials and a major income source (economic) * As a result of the Great Depression, companies throughout Germany were declaring bankruptcy and millions of workers were
The German government thought that the terms of the treaty were very harsh, but had no choice but to accept them. Apart from the many harsh terms Germany had to follow they also had o pay back an extremely unrealistic amount of money, which ruined its economy. A few months after the treaty was signed, German money was practically worthless. German people had to live in very poor conditions and there was hardly any money in the country. After the shame the Treaty of Versailles caused for