When discussing whether one agrees with the statement which has been proposed, we would be drawn to look towards not only the Great Depression’s influence towards Hitler’s rise, but a number of other factors. One in which would be seen to have a large impact would be the topic of The Treaty of Versailles. If not for this treaty, it could be said that Germany’s economic problems in the early 1920’s would, perhaps, not have happened.
Furthermore, in order to be able to answer whether I agree with the statement from Hobsbawm, the charisma and leadership qualities of Hitler himself must be brought into account. Many argue that if it wasn’t Hitler to rise into the limelight, someone would have taken his place and simply done the same…However, when
…show more content…
Firstly, a condition of the Treaty of Versailles was that ‘Germany was to pay the victorious entente powers huge financial reparations, which compounded the country’s already vast economic problems.’ This, coupled with the fact that German colonies were to also be handed over, made the German economy, before The Great Depression, an environment where Geary believes ‘fuelled nationalist propaganda’ The reason that the handing over of these colonies hurt the German economy so much was the fact that places such as Lorraine ‘had rich deposits of iron ore that had provided cheap raw material for the steel industry of the Ruhr.’ These facts then can be seen to have an effect, when we see by the winter of 1918-19, over a million Germans were without a job. Now, these figures aren’t as bad as those in later years, but because they were concentrated in a few large cities, this made them politically volatile. Things did indeed get worse. As we read in ‘Hitler and Nazism’, ‘things only got out of hand when the rate of inflation overtook the international devaluation of the mark in 1923.’ As a result of this, firms went bankrupt, and others were forced to lay off large numbers of workers. This in itself can be seen to draw in another topic, as we learn that this ‘led to…a great upturn in the fortunes of the German Communist Party.’ This had