Germany and the Great Depression

The great Depression is considered one of the worst periods of times in the 20th Century. The Great Depression was a global economic break-down and during those times almost every country that was affected by, had a change in government. For example in the USA, people where starving and as a result the government had to issue ration tickets for food to the people. With regards to Germany and the Great Depression we will be reviewing the impact of inflation, unemployment, the uprising of people, the rise of nationalism and the Nazi party and the eventual change of government that brought about dramatic changes in the country, in Europe and the whole world.


Germany at the time was entering into one of its worst economic crisis in their History. The reparations they had to pay to the Allies as a result of the Treaty of Versailles were so tough that the country was on its knees. The Government had to constantly print more and more money in order to pay for their depts. As a result the value of the German Mark decreased dramatically and also the prices were constantly increasing. Germany entered into a state of hyperinflation and as a result in some extreme cases people were burning their money in order to warm themselves up as they didn’t care about the money because they felt that it was worth almost nothing.

It should be noted that during the Great Depression countries had generally very high unemployment rates which were constantly rising. There are estimates that there were several millions of people unemployed across the world and six million in Germany alone. As a result, people started to question how effective were their governments as they couldn’t bring about stability, create jobs and enforce democracy. The people became unhappy with their governments and started to look for other types of government because of the high unemployment rates, the lack of work prospects, the money supply, and the resources, in general, that were available.

It was, therefore, not a surprise that very soon there were signs of social unrest and people took to the streets. In 1932 the worst of such outbreaks took place occurred at Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia. On August 1st, just a few hours after the results of the elections had been made known the Nazis took to the streets and introduced their reign of terror. According to reports the Nazis started this, apparently by their failure to obtain a parliamentary majority in the elections. They took to the streets stoning shop-windows, burning gasoline stations and attempting to destroy democratic or socialist newspaper offices by fire. At the same time sought out prominent members of the Socialist and Communist parties who were murdered or assaulted in their homes. The uprising had began but it was no longer a simple uprising complaining about inflation and unemployment but it was evident that it was driven by nationalism and hate.

In many countries around the world, during the time of the Great Depression the government structure changed. People were feeling that it was their government’s fault that the Great Depression was happening and that their lives became miserable. As a result they started looking at different ideologies and government types. In Germany, before the Great Depression, the Democratic Party was the most popular party and the people loved it. The Communist and Nazi parties where unpopular, at the time, and had only a few followers. During the Great Depression, however, things began to change. The German people felt that their government, lead by the Democratic Party, was largely responsible for the economic collapse.

As a result of this the Nazi and the Communist parties in Germany were attracting more support, becoming more popular and getting stronger. Obviously the growth of popularity for the Nazi and Communist parties was based on two very opposing ideologies. The Nazis based their arguments on nationalism and blamed the Western Allies for the hard World War I reparations as well as targeting the rich Jewish Germans for controlling the economy of the Country. On the other hand, the Communist Party drew it support for the large unemployed group of people and based its arguments of social injustice. Both these parties naturally attracted support and were becoming very popular. Unfortunately for the Communist Party was not able to compete with their rivals, the Nazis, and they only increased by a small percentage whereas the Nazi party in 1932 became the biggest and strongest party in all of Germany. As a result in 1933 the Nazi Party won the elections and Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Hitler used propaganda very cunningly in order to increase his own and his party’s popularity to an extent that the German people believed that the only hope they and the country had was with Hitler. Suddenly the German people felt that they found their Messiah to lead them out of the greatest gloom in their history.

As a conclusion, we can see that the global Great Depression came about at the worst possible time for Germany. The country had just lost World War I and was forced to pay very harsh reparations. In addition to this, Germany needed to re-build its economy and when the Great Depression arrived Germany was totally unprepared and on its knees. The Great Depression caused hyperinflation and huge unemployment to Germany and this inevitably resulted to people uprising as well as dramatic increase of Nationalism. Unfortunately this brought the Nazi Party into power and the result for Germany, Europe and the whole World were the cataclysmic events that led to World War II.