Inflation Helped the Nazis Rise to Power | Fireside Chat | PragerU

So I want to tell you a little about inflation. It's not a sexy topic and I fully understand that. Give me a few minutes and I'll show you how unbelievably important it is. I'll begin with a rather dramatic fact. I have a great deal of knowledge about the Nazi period. The Nazis were elected, even though they didn't get a majority of the Germans' votes, but in the 1932 elections they became, I believe, the biggest party in the Reichstag, the German parliament. It's a very interesting fact that Hitler played down antisemitism to appeal to more Germans for votes. So I say it as a Jew and as somewhat of a historian, that the notion that all Germans were antisemites is just not true. This doesn't absolve Germany of the most hideous crimes recorded. Nevertheless, if you don't start on a basis of truth, you can't progress in life. And if it wasn't antisemitism, then, that elected the Nazis, Hitler and the Nazis, what was it? And the answer is inflation. Inflation was the greatest single contributor to Nazi popularity. If you check this out, inflation in the Weimar Republic, the Weimar Republic was the name of the German republic between the end of World War I in 1918 and the Nazi ascent to power in 1933, after the 32 elections. In the Weimar Republic, the inflation was so horrible that prices would change on items more or less every hour. You will see pictures, it's worth looking up, of people with money, cash, in a wheelbarrow, taking it to the store to buy a loaf of bread. It took a wheelbarrow worth of cash to buy a loaf of bread. That was the worst inflation I think that we know, at least in modern history, the one that took place in Germany in the Weimar Republic. Had there not been that inflation, Hitler probably would not have been elected. Inflation is so utterly destructive that it can bring demagogues to power. Because inflation, even more than a high tax rate, literally robs you of what you have. Because if you have, to put it in dollars, if you have $1,000 and you could buy $1,000 worth of things, but in the next year or the next six months you can only buy $100 worth of things, you have been robbed of $900 in that period of time. Inflation is a thief. And people understand this, and it's very scary. You worked your whole life, you saved, or like Grace who just asked that question, she's only 22. But she's been told her life, the right thing to do is save. But why save if my money is going to be worth a lot less next year? It's a very legitimate question.