The ‘Weimar Golden Years’ of 1924-29 had merely been hiding the weaknesses of the German economy that already existed, and thus when the Great Depression hit Germany, the collapse of the German economy became inevitable. This was mainly because the loans that German industry and German agriculture had borrowed off the US were lent at high rates and interest and were mostly short-term loans, i.e. they could be recalled at short notice. That is exactly what happened in 1929, and soon businesses went bankrupt and had to close. To try to fight the depression, Chancellor Heinrich Brüning encouraged President Hindenburg to use Article 48 and passed laws lowering incomes, making cuts in the money spent on welfare payments, cutting expenditure and
