By 1923 prices had become ridiculous, although people who had taken out large loans (such as industrialists who were mostly against the Weimar Republic and on the side of the right since they feared the communist and their anti-capitalism) benefited, and German goods were cheap for other countries to buy which did stimulate trade and employment. The German currency, the mark, slipped drastically in value. It had been four marks to the U.S. dollar until the war reparations were announced. Then it became 75 to the dollar and in 1922 sank to 400 to the dollar. The German government asked for a postponement of payments. The French refused. The Germans defied them by defaulting on their payments.
In response to this, in January 1923, the French Army occupied the industrial part of Germany known as the Ruhr.This caused strikes on this part of germany, now under French and Belgian control, this caused that France and Belgium had great looses in this campaigne.For the moment, the people stood by their government, admiring its defiance of the French. But in September of 1923, the German government made the fateful decision to resume making payments. Bitter resentment and unrest swelled among the people, inciting extremist political groups to action and quickly bringing Germany to the brink of chaos.
In this year took place the munich putsch where radical right-winged Germans lidered by Hitler marched to seize power from the goverment covsidered ant-patriots because of the signing of the treaty of versailles and blamed for their gestioning of the country. The movement was crushed but this gave Hitler popularity and was seen by the Germans as the leader of the movement against the humiliation of Germany in the Treaty and the leader that could make Germany great again.
The treaty of Versailles was the most important reason of why Hitler camed to power because it set the scene for Hitler and was the backround cause of all the things that led Hitler to power from the enourmous amouts of reparations till the beer hall putsch and the appointment of Hitler as chancelor of Germany.
