02-01-2016, 11:10 AM
Quote:The Weimar German economy broke out of hyperinflation thanks to Hjalmar Schacht's economic genius.
At least we have someone here from a civilized nation that has *some* education on the matter. Schacht was appointed economic minister *by Hitler*. It appears you have at least a reasonable education on the sociological end of that era, on the economic portion I would point out the Dawes Plan combined with gold standard as the main forces that solidified the currency. For the record, Shacht was actually against a lot of the economic policy that was utilized to heighten overall prosperity for the poor during the Weimar 'golden years'- it was more a Keysian economic approach combined with the Dawes Plan that solidified the economy.
Quote:No, it was paying off severe debt from the Treaty of Versailles, although at least one French guy made the claim that they faked it all to try to get out of paying reparations and Germany was perfectly capable of paying.
The manner in which they were paying it off is what destroyed the currency which is the very specific point we were talking about. How the debt is acquired is meaningless, intent means nothing when discussing economic policy. For a current, German, example of this, look into their political views on quantitative easing.
Quote:Explain how Germany recovered from hyperinflation and went on to have some economic prosperity before the Great Depression hit them.
It was a multi faceted approach, but it needs to be looked at from an honest perspective. The middle class never truly recovered until Hitler was given ultimate power. In order to stabilize the German economy the US structured an economic plan, the Dawes Plan, that allowed the payments of reparation to be manageable by the German government. They created a new currency- *BACKED BY GOLD*- which made hyperinflation impossible without a complete collapse of logic by the head of the bank(that was Schacht at that point in time- not arguing his intellect at all for the record). Large public works projects were started to improve the infrastructure of Germany along with a heavily pushed increase in industrial production capabilities. This policy helped out the poorest people considerably, in fact it got to the point where a great deal of the blue collar workers surpassed the income level of their white collar countrymen who were in dire economic straits as a result of the fallout from hyperinflation. These disenfranchised people are who formed the core of the Nazi party. What ended up happening when viewed at in totality is that the middle class contracted very quickly, a contraction that didn't really end until the third Reich.
Quote:Wrong. It was appointing Hitler to be Chancellor and thinking he was controllable.
A 'Hitler' doesn't take over a properly functioning country. If Germany was operating close to reasonable in the view of the populace, Hitler never would have been appointed. Hyperinflation destroyed everyone but the wealthiest in Germany, their economic recovery only included the poorest people, nigh killing the middle class, all of the actions taken after the Dawes plan took care of the poorest people- but left the middle class decimated. Once the Great Depression hit- the lack of a middle class made Germany particularly susceptible as their own populace had relatively little buying power and hence, the broader global economic conditions destroyed the working poor progress that had been made. During that period of time, the Nazi party had made themselves very popular with the disenfranchised in the country and had already made significant progress on the mainstream political front, the collapse of the economic situations that allowed the poor to have a livable wage resulted in a consolidation of consensus among enough of the population to put Hitler in power.