Why Did Support Increase Dramatically for the Nazi’s after 1929?
By Lisa Murray
In 1929 just as Germany began to recover and stabilise from the war economically, they were hit very badly by the Wall Street Crash. In 1923 Germany introduced a new currency which ended hyper-inflation in the country. Germany had taken out loans from America in order to pay its debts to countries such as France, and to begin re-building their country physically, economically and socially. Germany was on the up, hundreds of houses were built to house the homeless, unemployment began to fall, industry recovered, life expectancy increased and an their was a system of unemployment insurance. This recovery meant the German people were less interested in extreme political parties and their radical ideas, i.e the Nazi’s, because people no longer needed extreme change. But then in 1929 the country was devastated by the Wall Street Crash.
Wall Street was the US stockmarket, the biggest in the world. During the 1920’s the price of stocks and shares rose quickly, many Americans took out loans to buy shares, so they could re-sell them at a later date for more money. But in October 1929 the prices dropped sharply, and pople that had borrowed money were unable to repay them causing some banks to go bust. People paniced and began withdrawing all their money from the banks, in order to pay this money banks had to collect in their loans. The loan paid to Germany was also called in, this caused chaos in Germany, causing a collapsing domino effect. Banks collapsed, they had no money to pay out, then due to this factories and industry went bankrupt as they couldn’t borrow money and had to pay back any they had out. With factories and industry closing up people became unemployed. The government could not pay out to the unemployed because there was no money to, especially not to such a great amount. Families had no money to buy food and were forced to go begging on the streets, they couldn’t pay rent or mortgages either and thousands became homeless. With people homeless and starving the German people looked to the government to sort the crisis and to lead Germany but unfortuantly they didn’t get it.
