Here are potential responses to the questions: 1. Hyperinflation devastated German living standards according to charts 3 and 4. Wages rose but could not keep pace with skyrocketing prices, so real wages declined sharply. 2. Food costs rose faster than rent because food is a necessity that people need to buy regularly, while rent contracts were often fixed for longer periods, protecting landlords. 3. Chart 4 shows that during hyperinflation, Germans could no longer afford meat, fish, fruit and luxury foods. Staples like bread, potatoes and fat became the main diet. 4. Pensioners were devastated because their fixed pensions did not increase with inflation, so their buying power was rapidly er

1. The Birth of Nazism

2. WWI
We see men living with their skulls blow open; we see soldiers
run with their two feet cut off, they stagger on their splintered
stumps into the next shell-hole; a lance-corporal crawls a mile
and a half on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him;
another goes into the dressing station and his clasped hands
bulge his intestines; we see men without jaws, without faces, we
find one man who has held the artery of his arm in his teeth for
two hours in order not to bleed to death. The sun goes down,
night comes, the shells whine, life is at an end.
Still the little piece of convulsed earth in which we lie is held. We
have yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to
the enemy. But on every yard there lies a dead man.
-All Quiet on the Western Front

8. Treaty of Versailles
War Guilt Clause
Reparations
Reduced Military
Loss of Land
Loss of Population

12. Hyperinflation

22. The vengeful French sent their army into the Ruhr to enforce their demands for
reparations, and the Germans were powerless to resist.
More than inflation, the Germans feared unemployment. In 1919 Communists had
tried to take over, and severe unemployment might give the Communists another
chance.
So the printing presses ran, and once they began to run, they were hard to stop. The
price increases began to be dizzying. Menus in cafes could not be revised quickly
enough. A student at Freiburg University ordered a cup of coffee at a cafe. The price
on the menu was 5,000 Marks. He had two cups. When the bill came, it was for
14,000 Marks. "If you want to save money," he was told, "and you want two cups of
coffee, you should order them both at the same time."
The presses of the Reichsbank could not keep up though they ran through the night.
Individual cities and states began to issue their own money.

23. A factory worker described payday, which was every day at 11:00 a.m.: "At 11:00 in the
morning a siren sounded, and everybody gathered in the factory forecourt, where a five-ton
lorry was drawn up loaded brimful with paper money. The chief cashier and his assistants
climbed up on top. They read out names and just threw out bundles of notes. As soon as you
had caught one you made a dash for the nearest shop and bought just anything that was
going."
Teachers, paid at 10:00 a.m., brought their money to the playground, where relatives took the
bundles and hurried off with them. Banks closed at 11:00 a.m.; the harried clerks went on
strike.
The flight from currency that had begun with the buying of diamonds, gold, country houses,
and antiques now extended to minor and almost useless items -- bric-a-brac, soap, hairpins.
The law-abiding country crumbled into petty thievery. Copper pipes and brass armatures
weren't safe. Gasoline was siphoned from cars. People bought things they didn't need and used
them to barter -- a pair of shoes for a shirt, some crockery for coffee.
Prostitutes of both sexes roamed the streets. Cocaine was the fashionable drug. In the cabarets
the newly rich and their foreign friends could dance and spend money. Other reports noted
that not all the young people had a bad time. Their parents had taught them to work and save,
and that was clearly wrong, so they could spend money, enjoy themselves, and flout the old.

25. General Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937)
was a top German military commander in
the latter stages of World War I. After the
war, he attempted to seize power,
alongside Adolf Hitler, in Germany in the
1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch (Coup). He
later was a member of the Reichstag as a
representative of the Nazi Party.
Munich Beer Hall Putsch - 1923

26. Munich during the failed Beer Hall Putsch.

27. Defendants in the Beer Hall Putsch trial. From left to right: Pernet, Weber, Frick, Kiebel,
Ludendorff, Hitler, Bruckner, Röhm, and Wagner. Note that only two of the defendants
(Hitler and Frick) were wearing civilian clothes

28. Mein Kampf is an autobiographical manifesto
by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, in which he
outlines his political ideology and future
plans for Germany

29. The SA were in charge of providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the
meetings of the opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties
and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists and Jews .

30. A member of the NSDAP from its earliest days,
Hermann Göring was wounded in 1923 during
the failed coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch.
After helping Adolf Hitler take power in 1933,
he became the second-most powerful man in
Germany. He founded the Gestapo (Secret
Police) in 1933. Göring was appointed
commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe (air
force) in 1935, a position he held until the final
days of World War II.
By 1940, he was responsible for much of the
functioning of the German economy in the
build-up to World War II. In 1941, Hitler
designated him as his successor and deputy in
all his offices.

31. Hyperinflation in 1920s Germany
Student 1 – You have worked hard and saved your whole life, your savings is deposited in
the bank.
Student 2 – You are a worker who lives paycheck to paycheck, buying groceries and pay
bills each time you are paid.
Student 3 – You have taken out loans from the bank to open a store. You owe the bank
money.
Follow-up:
1. What will happen to each of these people during a period of hyperinflation?
A – Workers?
B – People with savings?
C – People with debts. For example, business owners?
2. What could they do to protect themselves and provide for their needs?

32. Use the handout to answer the following questions in your logbook:
1. According to charts 3 and 4, how did hyperinflation affect German living standards?
2. Why did food costs rise proportionally much faster than rent?
3. What does chart 4 tell us about the impact of hyperinflation on the German diet? What
items were considered luxuries?
4. Why were pensioners (people who had retired) especially devastated?
5. Why did many industrialists (factory owners) actually benefit from inflation?
6. Assess the impact of hyperinflation on specific occupational groups, such as farmers,
landlords, factory workers, sales clerks, etc.