Adolph Hitler Took Over When The German Mark Collapsed
In 1923 the Germans stalled on their reparations payments and the French seized the industrial Ruhr to compel payment. The German mark had been declining since World War II. It began plunging: 7,000 to the dollar in January, 160,000 in July, 1 million in August. A kind of madness swept the country. People carried suitcases of money to buy something to eat and the mark kept falling, to an all-time low of 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar. Everything was for sale, all savings were destroyed, and nothing seemed to have any value any longer. No less than military defeat and social upheaval, the hyperinflation undermined all the traditional securities of German society. At this point Adolf Hitler entered the scene.