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No being in debt is like falling down a well

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We only get out with help lots and lots of

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help or money At any rate it was the end

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of world war europe was a smoking ruling and all

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of a sudden the allies were banging down germany's door

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howling for money See since the allies won the war

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they got to pin the blame for all the shenanigans

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that took place during the conflict on germany Because those

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shenanigans resulted in a whole lot of death and a

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whole lot of destruction The allies insisted that the germans

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pay up well A group called the allied reparations committee

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threw a dart at a board and decided that the

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germans owed the allies one hundred thirty two billion marks

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with the first payment due in nineteen twenty one in

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today's money one hundred thirty two billion marks is equivalent

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to four hundred seventy billion american dollars Keep in mind

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it's not like the germans were sitting on a pot

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of gold in the first place Instead the germans were

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sitting on top of a bunch of corpses and destroyed

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infrastructure and while most their young men had been killed

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They had no cash while the germans managed to make

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their reparations payment nineteen twenty one they couldn't pull the

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dough together in nineteen twenty two so the french and

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the belgians who were still pretty irate about everything that

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went down in the summer nineteen fourteen marched into the

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ruhr and no that wasn't their local pub but rather

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an area in western germany that contained lots of coal

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mines and steel factories If the germans wouldn't hand over

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their reparations payment then the allies would just extract it

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from them The germans felt obliged to print more money

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in order to meet their obligations However since they had

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nothing in the bank to back up their marks their

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currency was basically well worthless Consequently the german economy tanked

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nineteen twenty for the allied reparations committee panicked if they

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didn't do something fast they'd never get another dime out

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of the floundering germans entered charles dawes an american banker

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who would serve his vice president under calvin coolidge While

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his plan was to reduce germany's reparations payments to a

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manageable number have american investors loan the germans some cash

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and kick those idiot french out of the ruhr common

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Sense is a beautiful thing right The dawes plan worked

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In fact it works so well that daws was a

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co winner of the nineteen twenty five nobel peace prize

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American money poured into europe and nations that had been

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devastated by the war finally began to recover But then

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the us stock market got hot and people started throwing

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their money at it instead of europe we'll stock prices

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went stratospheric became unhinged from reality and then crashed on

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october twenty fourth nineteen twenty nine america meet the great

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depression great depression made america your grand parents may have

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told you of times when banks were failing when people

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were out of work and when all the money they

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had saved up was gone in a puff of smoke

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What you may not realize is that while these issues

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made life in the united states pretty miserable for a

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number of years they carried over to other parts of

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the world to back in europe factory's cut production and

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people lost their jobs Governments faced with a depression and

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a lot of leftover problems from the war didn't know

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which way to turn europe's economic concerns were match with

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some pretty serious people problems as well After the war

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the allies broke up the central powers boundaries were redrawn

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new nations came into being The idea was that all

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of these minorities that had been crying for independence under

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the old empires would finally at long last have their

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very own countries to call home But those minorities had

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teo get home first Two million germans pulled up stakes

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from russia poland also slovin and the former german colonies

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and made their way to germany and austria Nearly a

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million greek christians left turkey after the war because just

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like the armenians they face persecution from the turks and

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the greeks in greece returned the favor by shooing half

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a million muslims toward turkey A depression mixed up borders

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lots of people on the move and lots of people

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without work Well at this point all we're missing is 00:03:53.71 --> [endTime] a bellowing windbag with a mustache

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