How does the great economic depression destroy the economy of Germany
Answers
The Depression was the final nail in free Germany’s coffin.
The hyperinflation of the early/mid 1920s had already wiped out the savings of middle class Germans. Traveling salesmen had to borrow money from a customer in the first city they visited so they could make the next leg of their journey. Housewives descended on stores as soon as they could in the morning before prices rose at noon.
The Depression added to Germany’s misery by destroying international commerce as nations enacted protective tariffs to discourage imports and protect native industries and firms. International trade plummeted even further than it had because of the initial downturn. The US enacted the famous Smoot-Hawley Tariff, famous because almost every prominent economist in the US wrote an open letter to President Hoover begging him not to sign the bill into law. Their entreaties were in vain, and the American tariff was met by similar countermeasures by its trading partners.
Germany had a robust (for the time, you understand) export economy.
Protective tariffs of other countries lowered demand for German exports, with ruinous and predictable results.
Hitler embarked on a program to build autobahns and other infrastructure projects. It succeeded enough that some people believe that had he died in 1938 he would be remembered today as the man who saved Germany. His program and approach was so similar to Roosevelt’s in the US that Roosevelt administration operatives had to ask American newspapers and magazines not to make so many comparisons between Hitler and Roosevelt.