The Downfall of Money: Germany’s Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class (62 page)

Crime scene photograph of the site of Rathenau’s murder, June 1922

Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in the open-topped car in which he was assassinated hours after a midnight meeting with Stinnes

The Ruhr invasion: a French soldier guards a coal shipment in Germany’s occupied industrial heartland, 1923

Reichswehr troops arrest a Communist paramilitary in Saxony, October 1923

Chancellor Cuno (
left
), November 1922 to August 1923, with President Ebert

A disabled war veteran begs in post-war Berlin

Destitute middle-class Germans selling their possessions at public auction

A food queue outside a high-class grocer’s shop in Berlin during the hyperinflation

The Munich Putsch. Heinrich Himmler, later architect of the Holocaust and Reichsführer-SS (
centre with flag
) mans a barricade. To his left is Max Scheubner-Richter, killed at Hitler’s side just hours later

Young Hitler, early 1920s

Collection of the day’s wages from the Reichsbank for a small business (15 employees), late 1923

Worthless money finds use, as wallpaper and as a children’s amusement

Old paper marks destroyed after the currency reform, early 1924

A Note on the Author

Frederick Taylor was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School, read History and Modern Languages at Oxford and did postgraduate work at Sussex University. He edited and translated
The Goebbels Diaries 1939–41
and is the author of three acclaimed books of narrative history,
Dresden
,
The Berlin Wall
and
Exorcising Hitler
. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and lives in Cornwall.

By the Same Author

Dresden

The Berlin Wall

Exorcising Hitler

Also Available by Frederick Taylor

The Berlin Wall

13 August 1961 – 9 November 1989