This book explores the relevance of the politics of the Weimar Republic to its economic history. It traces the origins, political fragility and eventual destruction of the unstable government of interwar Germany. An indispensable guide to an extremely significant period in European economic history.

This is a succinct overview of the turbulent economic history of the Weimar Republic. Theo Balderston, an experienced teacher of economic history, summarises the wealth of recent research on the subject, and presents it in lucid, accessible form. He offers new perspectives on the economic effects of the Reparations conflict and of domestic political struggles for postwar inflation and the slump. Controversial analyses of the slow economic growth of even the Republic's best years have implications for the instability or otherwise of its political economy. Recent globalisation and global debt crises throw new light on the foreign debt burden with which Germans saddled themselves in the later 1920s, and the fateful financial crisis of 1931. Theo Balderston explains new analyses of the role of economic policy in worsening the slump and thus paving the way for Hitler.