Title: Did World War I Cause the Great Depression? - HISTORY
Headings: 
How Economic Turmoil After WWI Led to the Great Depression
World War I’s legacy of debt, protectionism and crippling reparations set the stage for a global economic disaster.
America Retreats From the World
German Reparations Weigh Down Europe
Economic Barriers Restrict Trade
The Global Economy Collapses
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Content: German Reparations Weigh Down Europe
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Council of Four at the WWI Paris peace conference, May 27, 1919 (L - R) Great Britain Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Italian Premier Vittorio Orlando, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. The treaty signed at the conference saddled Germany with billions of dollars in reparations. As a result, the punitive Treaty of Versailles required Germany to pay billions of dollars in reparations to Great Britain, France, Belgium and other Allies. “ The Peace is outrageous and impossible and can bring nothing but misfortune,” wrote economist John Maynard Keynes after resigning in protest as the British Treasury Department’s chief representative to the peace conference. In his international bestseller The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes argued that the onerous reparations would only further impoverish Germany and exacerbate the damage caused to the European economy by the war. What ensued was a vicious flow of money back and forth across the Atlantic as American bankers lent money to Germany to pay reparations to the Allies to repay their debts to the United States. With the Allies refusing to ease reparation terms, Germany defaulted on its payments in 1923, and its economy further crumbled when factories shuttered after France and Belgium occupied the industrial Ruhr region to force German repayment. To come up with the money to meet its obligations, Germany accelerated its currency printing, which caused such hyperinflation that the German mark became virtually worthless. The exchange rate of the German mark to the American dollar plummeted from 32.9 to 1 in 1919 to 433 billion to 1 by 1924. The paper on which German marks were printed had more value as kindling or children’s building blocks than as currency.