This book effortlessly sets the stage for the Germany’s 1923 hyperinflation that would be exploited by the National Socialist Workers’ Party. With this grand scale of inflation and devaluation, Germany experiences social unrest, political turmoil, and bureaucratic upheaval. This book takes you step by step through the sequence of events, while walking you side by side with those who experienced it firsthand. The price of necessities such as bread, flour, milk, and other needs continued to climb so high until it bred famine. Eventually worthless, locals found the money was more useful as wallpaper or as paper to start a fire with. The facts explored in this book are endless and critical to understanding the consequences of deficit spending.
Notably, as one of the calamities that would benefit Hitler’s rise to power, readers are also exposed to the moral decay that grew alongside inflation. Family members would see relatives asserting that “creative capital is the capital we Germans have: parasitical capital is the capital of the Jew.” The author goes into details that links the Holocaust with Germany’s fiscal direction.
It is a hard read to get through because of the dull and barren tone. But the information is highly impressive. Have a highlighter ready!