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The Great Depression

Germany went into a harder depression than most. This matters because it is what led to Adolf Hittler gaining power and the massacre of the Jewish people. The reason he got into this power is because of the German citizens looking towards extreme political views for answers for the economical situation. This was all due to the stock market crash which happened on October 24th 1929 and the Treaty of Versailles which is the reason for most of the unemployment.  A big factor in this was the unemployment rates especially in the nation's army was limited to only 100,000 men due to the Treaty of Versailles. Due to this treaty Germany lost 48% of their iron and 16% of their coal industry. For a comparison during that time in America 20% of the current population had lost their jobs which was 15 million people, whereas in Germany 24% of the people lost their jobs which was 6 million people. This was all due to the stock market crash which happened on October 24th 1929 and the Treaty of Versailles which is the reason for most of the unemployment. Germany was also losing heaps of money due to the money they owed the United States which is now worth $400 billion dollars in today's money. What Germany had to agree to by signing the

Treaty of Versailles and why it was so important for Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty was such an important thing for Germany to sign even though they didn’t want to, as they needed to make peace with the allied forces because Germany signed this Treaty it meant they took full responsibility for starting the first world war. The Treaty of Versailles would financially ruin Germany where they needed to pay $33 billion USD. Which took the country 92 years to pay off; it had also subsequently wreaked the nation even more during The Great Depression. As a way to compensate for starting world war 1 Germany had to cut down their army from 6 million to 100.000 troops and all troops had to be volunteers as Germany couldn’t draft any soldiers. They needed to hand over 13%  of their land while simultaneously losing 10% of their population. Signing this Treaty meant Germany allowed the Allied forces to conduct trials for war crimes, but only 17 German’s where held trials; some cases were dismissed and the people who were prosecuted received light sentences. 

The ways New Zealand were affected by The Great Depression. New Zealand suffered a heavy blow from The Great Depression due to their under preparedness to face the depression, this was because the effects of the market crash were not noticed straight away. At this point of time New Zealand was too dependent on farming exports which made the blow of the depression hit New Zealand very hard. Business was starting to feel an effect as consumers started to drop in numbers with an unfortunate 12% percent of New Zealanders losing their jobs and the people who kept their jobs would go on to lose 20% of their pay. The government tried to make the depression less harmful by setting up plans for the unemployed Kiwi’s which had them travel for small amounts of payments. Of course the unemployed Kiwi citizens started to riot in Christchurch, Auckland and Dunedin during the first half of 1932. The Great Depression would eventually end worldwide in 1939.