Hitler and His Accomplices of Evil Part 2 of 4

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Part 2 The long way to power ... 1923 -1928

Germany between 1923 and 1928
Due to inflation, there was a hitherto unimaginable redistribution of assets in Germany taking place. Virtues such as labor, economy, and honesty led to impoverishment and downgraded wage, salary, and pension recipients to petitioners who had to go to poor kitchens to feed their families. 

In contrast, a small number of big business owners, currency speculators, and shoppers quickly became wealthy. This was openly displayed and invested in luxury products. These new rich bought everything they could get hold of. Thus, precious metals, jewelery, paintings, porcelain, utensils, home furnishings, land, houses, factories changed owners and increasingly increased social inequality. Frequently, the newly acquired assets came from previously respected households. In particular, the pensioneers lost their entire fortune through inflation.
 
The pensioneers can be counted in the persons who had to end their years of life mainly by the interest on their financial assets. These included, for example, private scholars, successful artists, writers, professors, doctors and lawyers. In order to raise the cost of living, these elites, formerly found in science and culture, were forced to sell their last valuable possessions at next to nothing.

In contrast to the still existing belief in the inflation-proof property, home ownership was hardly a solution to the dilemma of inflation. Since rents were capped by the state, real estate could no longer be realized with rental properties in the final stages of inflation.

The above conditions helped Hitler and his party to gain more and more influence in the coming years. Here are a few major events attributing to the overall situation:

At the end of 1922 Germany was in default with the reparations payments for WWI
French and Belgians accused Germany of deliberate violation of the Versailles Treaty
At the beginning of 1923, the French and Belgians occupied the Ruhr area in order to get the reparations themselves
The Reich government stopped reparations payments thereupon
The Reich government called people to passive resistance
Workers of the mines + industrial companies stopped their work and went on a nationwide strike
Supporting the striking Ruhr population cost Germany 40 million gold marks per day
Value of the mark fell to the bottomless, more money was printed
Gustav Stresemann (Chancellor in 1923 and Foreign Minister 1923–1929, during the Weimar Republic) announced in September 1923 the end of the Ruhr fight
Enemies of the Weimar Republic then tried to seize power: separatists, together with France, tried to separate from the Rhineland and establish an independent Rheinish Republic of Germany
In Saxony and Thyringa, communist state ministers resisted government orders
In Hamburg, there were violent clashes with the police
Adolf Hitler tried to seize power in Munich
The government in Berlin succeeded, however, with the help of the Reichswehr to suppress the uprisings
Inflation ended and on 15 November 1923, with the "Rentenmark" Germany created a fixed currency

Read also

• Hitler and His Accomplices of Evil Part 4 of 4
• Hitler and His Accomplices of Evil Part 3 of 4
• Hitler and His Accomplices of Evil Part 1 of 4

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