The Great Depression which hit the world in 1929 had a massive impact on the United States and the world. Once the stock market had collapsed in the United States, it affects started to leak throughout the world and had a great impact on Europe. Since Europe was already trying to recover from a great crisis at the time, it put Europe in a greater dilemma. One of the countries that the Great Depression had affected the most was Germany. This period in Germany was going to be some of the countries darkest moments in histories.
Germany had already been trying to recover from the affects of the war. At the time Germany had to rebuild their economy, since it was destroyed by the League of Nations due to their defeat in World War I. In addition to rebuilding their economy they had to pay the Allied countries billions of dollars for the damages that Germany had caused while fighting against the allied countries. For Germany to be able to pay the loans to the allies, they had been getting loans from the United States and using that money to ay the allies. However once the United States went into crisis no more money was coming into Germany. Because of this crisis, inflation had shot high for the German economy.
Prior to the depression Germanys currency was already fading. The exchange rates between the dollar and the mark would be colossal, to the extent were one dollar would be equivalent to trillions of German marks. But it did not take to long for the depression to affect the countries currency. It was losing its value so rapidly that at the end the ink and paper it was being printed on was too expensive. The money had become completely worthless. Thus resulting to all the money the citizens had in the bank accounts becoming worthless people were losing there funds.
Why Germany was incredibly affected by the Great Depression at the time was because; it was the only country in Europe at that point which was paying a debt. Since Germany was paying this debt to the league especially to France, they were benefiting these payments. Any money that Germany had was going to pay off the debt with the allies. Because of this there was no more money, and jobs the country was in a serious dilemma, and that resulted in the collapse of the Weimar Government. Once the government had collapsed the country was in pure disaster economically and now politically.
All these effects brought Germany to her knees. Since everything had collapsed meaning the economy, the government, there was no leader of the country to show the people what the country should do. This led to the uprising of the Nazi party who had taken charge of the government. Adolf Hitler was the leader of this party and promised to bring back Germany to her golden times. Since he was the only person in Germany who was taking responsibility the Germany people had taken him as their lead with open arms. At the time of Nazi party arrivals into the government already Germany was seeing a slight increase to their economy so you can assume that this benefited the party a lot in the public eye.
For all we know WWII could have been stopped very easily, if history would have been a little different. The rise of Hitler and his Nazi party could have been stopped, if Germany would have the chance to bring itself off its knees Hitler would have not gotten into power. But because Germany was constantly getting beat down to the ground the people were looking for anything or anyone who could show them positive results in the near future. If there was no debt to be paid by the German to the allies then Germany could have helped them during the Great Depression. However maybe if Germany was to be alright during the depression, another country would have take the fall, and that country would have a Nazi party take charge. If that was the case France would be the country which would have taken the place of Germany if they were to find out a way from the depression.
Overall the Great Depression had brought massive negative effects across the world. Germany was one of the unfortunate countries to lose practically everything they had during this time. It does not surprise me that Germany took a leader like Adolf Hitler during that time. Anything would have been good for the German people; all they wanted was someone to bring order and reform back to Germany. The Great Depression combined with another effects were some of the darkest times for Germany and it people. It can be said that because of Germany suffering during the Great Depression lead to greater events in history which will also be remembered.
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