Well after WW1 as part of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany were made to pay reparations to rebuild war-torn France and Belgium. The total amount after dispute was set at £6.6 billion. One of Woodrow Wilson's famous 14 points was to create a league of nations, so there would never be another war like this.

Due to Wilson being a Democrat and the rest of his congress being republican, there was much dispute over whether America would join the league. The majority of the American public as well as the American congress no longer wanted to be involved in European affairs. So they followed a policy of insolationism outlined in the 1823 act , The Monroe Doctrine. So because of that isolationist attitude America never joined the league, there has been much debate over whether America not joining was why the league failed so miserably or whether it was the actions and the way Britain and France led the league.

President Warren Harding, described this isolationism as "a return to normalcy". There is also some debate about how much Harding'sclose knit group of friends known as, The Ohio Gang influenced isolationism.

So because America never joined they were free to do as they pleased and so they did. Because Germany was behind on payments, France occupied the Ruhr in 1923 as an "incentive" to make them pay. Germany was obviously angry at this and resisted. America then devised The Dawes Plan in 1924, to help raise loans for Germany to pay. Now because of isolationism, America experienced an economic boom and this could be seen in the decadent lifestyles of many Americans (e.g the "flapper" girls), because America helped Germany pay the reparations, they to indulged in decadence (e.g. Can be seen in the cultural and liberal attitudes of Weimar Berlin)

However in 1928, Germany wanted to amend their payment plan and so The Young Plan was devised. The main changes to this were the total amount that needed paying as well as the introduction of a payment schedule that would see Germany through to 1988.

However by 1929, over in America due to overproduction of "white consumer goods" (e.g. Radios, Fridges) that stock value of said items fluctuated between valuable and near worthless, so originally people bought loads of shares in a company only for that company to lose share value and plummet. When this happened people panicked and tried to get as much money from the banks as possible but this wasn't possible because of the sheer volume of people wanting to retrieve their money the banks had to lone out their money to other people and other banks.

This continued to happened until Thursday 29th October, known as "Black Thursday". The day the Wall Street Crashed. America flew into The Great Depression and No longer could bail Germany out, so they soon followed among other countries.

In 1919, a young man returned from war, he was appointed "intelligence agent" for the Reichswehr, his job was to influence soldiers views and infiltrate and report on the activities of the German Workers Party later renamed the NSDAP. This young reporter was sucked in to the ideals of the party and it's leader, Anton Drexler. Soon in 1921, he succeeded Drexler as party leader. This man filled his followers heads with ideas that the Jews were to blame, that he would make Germany great again.

He was bitter about the signing of the Treaty of Versailles as he thought it was unfair on Germany. He like many hated the politicians that had signed the treaty (see "The November Criminals") and the depression was the last straw. He promised more living space for Germans, among other things he promised the simplicity of "Work and Bread". He thought the best way to achieve this was to become Chancellor. This man was Adolf Hitler.

Sources and Further Reading:

1. Richard Evans' The Coming Of The Third Reich

2. Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man

3. Ian Kershaw's Hitler