1931
Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler
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Narrated by:
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Nigel Patterson
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By:
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Tobias Straumann
About this listen
Germany's financial collapse in the summer of 1931 was one of the biggest economic catastrophes of modern history. It led to a global panic, brought down the international monetary system, and turned a worldwide recession into a prolonged depression. The reason for the financial collapse was Germany's large pile of foreign debt denominated in gold currency which condemned the government to cut spending, raise taxes, and lower wages in the middle of a worldwide recession. As the political resistance to this austerity policy grew, the German government began to question its debt obligations, prompting foreign investors to panic and sell their German assets. The resulting currency crisis led to the failure of the already weakened banking system and a partial sovereign default.
Hitler managed to profit from the crisis, because he had been the most vocal critic of the reparation regime. As the financial system collapsed, his relentless attacks against foreign creditors and the alleged complicity of the German government resonated more than ever with the electorate.
In 1931, Tobias Straumann reveals the story of the fatal crisis, demonstrating how a debt trap contributed to the rapid financial and political collapse of a European country, and to the rise of the Nazi Party.
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- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The American economy is strong in large part because nobody believes that America would ever default on its debt. Yet in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt did just that, when in a bid to pull the country out of depression, he depreciated the US dollar in relation to gold, effectively annulling all debt contracts. American Default is the story of this forgotten chapter in America's history.
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Superb
- By Jean on 12-08-18
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All the Presidents' Bankers
- The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power
- By: Nomi Prins
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 19 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Nomi Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and protégé relationships that have confined national influence to a privileged cluster of people. This unprecedented history of American power illuminates how financiers have retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation.
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You better like history about the elite and rich
- By Victor on 01-12-15
By: Nomi Prins
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And the Weak Suffer What They Must?
- Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
- By: Yanis Varoufakis
- Narrated by: Yanis Varoufakis, Leighton Pugh
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In January 2015, Yanis Varoufakis, an economics professor teaching in Austin, Texas, was elected to the Greek parliament with more votes than any other member of parliament. He was appointed finance minister, and, in the whirlwind five months that followed, everything he had warned about was confirmed as the "troika" (the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Commission) stonewalled his efforts to resolve Greece's economic crisis.
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interesting perspective
- By Jamila on 07-12-20
By: Yanis Varoufakis
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America's Bank
- The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A tour de force of historical reportage, America’s Bank illuminates the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the unlikely birth of America’s modern central bank, the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it seems a small miracle that it was ever established. For nearly a century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system.
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Important and Intriguing
- By Jean on 11-02-15
By: Roger Lowenstein
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The Last President of Europe
- Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World
- By: William Drozdiak
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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A revelatory examination of the global impact of Emmanuel Macron's tumultuous presidency. In The Last President of Europe, William Drozdiak tells with exclusive inside access the story of Macron's presidency and the political challenges the French leader continues to face.
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Interesting but poorly read
- By Anonymous User on 05-12-22
By: William Drozdiak
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Adults in the Room
- My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment
- By: Yanis Varoufakis
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 20 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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What happens when you take on the establishment? In Adults in the Room, renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis gives the full, blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth.
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Very interesting but listen with caution.
- By Dimitris on 10-08-19
By: Yanis Varoufakis
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Collapse
- The Fall of the Soviet Union
- By: Vladislav M. Zubok
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 23 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1945, the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong, 5,000 nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward, the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the 20th century.
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Hopefully Not Prescient
- By Joshua on 01-29-22
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When Money Dies
- The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar, Germany
- By: Adam Fergusson
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nations currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt....
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Useless details, missing the big points
- By Jean Le Lupi on 07-04-12
By: Adam Fergusson
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Volcker
- The Triumph of Persistence
- By: William L. Silber
- Narrated by: Ross Douglas
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of nearly half a century, five American presidents - three Democrats and two Republicans - have relied on the financial acumen, and the integrity, of Paul A. Volcker. During his tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, when he battled the Great Inflation of the 1970s, Volcker did nothing less than restore the reputation of an American financial system on the verge of collapse.
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Required Reading for 2022 Economy
- By Marc Uknis on 11-19-22
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To Build a Better World
- Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth
- By: Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form.
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Valuable historical narrative
- By Jane G. Malkin on 04-07-22
By: Philip Zelikow, and others
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The New Deal
- A Modern History
- By: Michael Hiltzik
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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As America struggles with an economic debacle akin to the Great Depression, nothing could be timelier than an authoritative account of the New Deal, masterfully written by Michael Hiltzik, author of the acclaimed history of the Hoover Dam, Colossus.
In this richly peopled, vividly rendered narrative, Hiltzik describes how the urgent short-term relief measures of Franklin Roosevelt’s Hundred Days evolved into a transformative concept of the federal role in American life.
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Another Excellent New Deal History
- By R.S. on 12-19-11
By: Michael Hiltzik
What listeners say about 1931
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- J. M. Batista
- 06-29-19
Congratulations...
... this is a book written from a novel analytic perspective and that refers a few rather less known but very fascinating characters. I just wished it was a longer book.
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- Philo
- 06-06-19
Emergency executive powers gone wild
This book is roughly half finance, half politics. It traces the troubled tangle of those factors in 1929-31, leading into a spiral that changed German society very quickly. To me, this models a rough scenario for what could happen if, now, the world economy suffers (or key national economies suffer) a financial-economic buckling. Public panic could easily open a path for lots of ever-more stringent emergency decrees by executive officials, not patient decisions by parliaments. The rise of an ever-stronger centralized executive and the proliferation of "emergency" declarations and decrees can become quite likely, and probably very quickly. Things unfolded slower back in 1931, but still sped up alarmingly. The German people suffered many years more than I would expect populations to do now.
Right now (mid-2019) we came from a recent (circa 2016) scenario of expected global economic growth (and at last, post-2008 normalization of financial indicators) to one of the weaponizing of trade. Whether necessary or not (as the politics differ on this), this amounts to some degree of human-made and government-provoked crisis. We have a chief executive who will go straight, fast-forward, to confrontation and declare emergencies without hesitation. This poses a concern of a self-fulfilling prophecy where an "emergency"-and-financial-contraction feedback loop intensifies, hopefully not to run off the rails. That is one reason I am focusing on the moment in history skillfully laid out in this book.
There is a good mix here of personality portraits, banking events, and careful, nuanced descriptions generally. The story moves well. It is not seemingly crafted for maximum entertainment.
The narrator is quite good and I am pleased to hear careful and (I think) accurate pronunciation of non-English words and names. That should be a minimum standard for audiobooks.
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