1931, Tobias Straumann
1931, Tobias Straumann
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1931
Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler

Author: Tobias Straumann

Narrator: Nigel Patterson

Unabridged: 6 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2019


Synopsis

Germany's financial collapse in the summer of 1931 was one of the biggest economic catastrophes of modern history. It led to a global panic, brought down the international monetary system, and turned a worldwide recession into a prolonged depression. The reason for the financial collapse was Germany's large pile of foreign debt denominated in gold currency which condemned the government to cut spending, raise taxes, and lower wages in the middle of a worldwide recession. As the political resistance to this austerity policy grew, the German government began to question its debt obligations, prompting foreign investors to panic and sell their German assets. The resulting currency crisis led to the failure of the already weakened banking system and a partial sovereign default.

Hitler managed to profit from the crisis, because he had been the most vocal critic of the reparation regime. As the financial system collapsed, his relentless attacks against foreign creditors and the alleged complicity of the German government resonated more than ever with the electorate.

In 1931, Tobias Straumann reveals the story of the fatal crisis, demonstrating how a debt trap contributed to the rapid financial and political collapse of a European country, and to the rise of the Nazi Party.

About Tobias Straumann

Tobias Straumann is an Associate Professor of Economic History at the University of Zurich. He is a member of the European Historical Economics Society and the academic council of the European Association for Banking and Financial History. Straumann has widely published in the area of twentieth-century European financial and monetary history, and is the author of Fixed Ideas of Money: Small States and Exchange Rate Regimes in Twentieth-Century Europe, and coauthor of The Value of Risk: Swiss Re and the History of Reinsurance.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Frank

This book is a confused and slightly bewildering look at the collapse of the European monetary order at the beginning of the Great Depression, but it has an important story to tell. The book begins in January 1930, when triumphant ministers from across Europe celebrated the conclusion of the “Second......more

Tobias Straumann's '1931: Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler' is a fascinating and highly accessible account of the role that unsustainable debt, crushing austerity, and political deadlock, played in both the discrediting of the establishment parties of the right and left - who had hitched their p......more

Goodreads review by Pep

Very good description of the financial crisis of 1931, describing all the elements that contributed to it. As with other books on the two World Wars, one gets a sense of inevitability that is quite depressing. Important reading, especially when we try to recover from the 2008 crisis, while waiting f......more

Goodreads review by Simon

I had always bucketed German economic malaise/distress that lead into the war fervor with hyperinflation (34). Straumann masterfully paints the slow burn into banking crises of 1931. Eye-opening, with flashes of the recent European crises. Very much worth a read for any lover of economic /business h......more