Fiscal Austerity And Hitler's Rise To Power

Brad DeLong (via Fabius Maximus) provides a short history of Hitler's rise to power. There are other histories that one might prefer, but my purpose is to point out that hyper-inflatiion was not the cause of Hitler's rise to power. The Great Depression was made worse by the imposition of austerity on the depressed German economy. The rise in unemployment that followed, and Hitler's bias for action, was the most important economic contribution to his rise to power.