Economic Weakness of the Weimar Government

Source A- American contemporary view of German World War I reparations. Political cartoon 1921.

Source A shows a large bag of money with 'Reparations' and a value on it, squashing a man with a t-shirt that says 'Germany'. This represents the large amount of reparations or debt that Germany had to pay due to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. This was a large burden to the already weak economy of post-war Germany and made many Germans resent the already unpopular Weimar government for agreeing to the terms.

Source B- A German poster urges passive resistance during the Ruhr crisis, under the motto "No! You won't subdue me!" (1923)

Source B shows a German Ruhr worker resisting the french and belgium soldiers. This is due to Germany's inability to pay reparations on time. As such French and Belgium armies marched into the Ruhr to take payment in materials. In return, the Government ordered the Workers to go on strike and not engage or help the soldiers in anyway.

This further caused the economy to collapse as Germany was not producing anything.

Source C- A woman using money as firewood for her stove

Source D- Children using money as a kite

Source E- A man using money as wallpaper

Source C, D and E shows the results of hyperinflation, in that money has less value and became useless. So much so that it was used for all the things mentioned above. To pay its debt, the government began printing more and more money so that it could be traded for foreign currency and used to pay other countries. However, this plan inevitably backfired with the currency quickly becoming useless and of little value.

It became so useless that it could no longer be used to pay reparations and Germany instead had to pay through materials like coal. Hyperinflation became even worse during the Ruhr crisis as the Government had to pay the workers for their passive resistance, they did this by printing more money.

Hyperinflation agitated the middle classes as their savings quickly became useless while the poor only became poorer.

Citations:

Source A- Wikipedia

Source B- Pintrest

Source C- BBC UK

Source D- Akruder. Glogster.

Source E- Wikipedia