Then a man named Charles Dawes arranged a loan to Germany of eight-hundred million marks and called in all the old currency and had it burnt.
After 1929 everything in Germany seemed calm and I was relieved because I could focus on my children, my husband and my house work. Everything was fine until Stresemann died of a stroke on October 3rd, 1929 and as the majority of Germany favoured Stresemann we were all very sad to hear of his death. However, nothing had prepared us for what was to come next.
In 1929 Germany went into depression, along with the rest of the world. The economic depression meant that factories shut down so it was hard for us to buy basic items and we became a lot poorer. This compounded the problem as it meant that because we were buying less and less items, even more factories were forced to shut down and more workers were made redundant.
Germany was hit the hardest during the depression and America which was in its own depression, cut its loans to Germany and left us almost bankrupt.
Now the parties of ‘stability’ in Germany lost credibility so support grew for ideas that offered radical solutions. People like myself, were absolutely desperate for an answer of Germany’s problems. So whereas in 1928 the communist party had got little over 3 million votes, by July 1932 they had more than 5 million. The Nazis
increased their votes from 800,000 in 1928 to 13.7 million in 1932.
As my husband was a factory worker, Hitler was never popular with him or the workers there. They majority of workers felt that their best defence against the great depression was their trade union and many of these supported the Communists. However, watching the Nazi followers expand and hearing their new ideas to support the middle class prompted me to rethink and after my husband lost his job, I convinced him to support them instead.
Hitler has an empowering solution to Germany’s problems; blame the communists and the Jews for the depression.
Although I don’t agree with all of Hitler’s ideas, especially the forcefully aggressive behaviour against the Communists and the Jews, something must be done. My parents, friends and family are now all unemployed and my father has recently had to shut down his business. They are all turning to the Nazis for help. We hope that voting for Hitler will help to end the depression so my family and I can go back to our once easy lives.
