Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

418 DER FUEHRERthe exception of conspicuously stable France, little touched by theevents outside her borders) was threatened with a sudden standstill ofeven the most indispensable economic functions, and only a miraclecould save it.The miracle seemed to come from America. On June 20, 1931,President Hoover called on the European states to declare a one-yearmoratorium on all intergovernmental debts, and America for her partagreed to declare a moratorium on her own demands. This might havebeen called the fulfillment of Ferdinand Fried's prophecy: that thecreditors had become unable to accept and digest their dues. It meantthe almost certain end of German reparations, for few people believedthat they would be resumed after a year's breathing spell, since it wasequally improbable that America's splendid capital investments inEurope would be resumed on the same scale. France, by shatteringAustria's economy, had helped to bring about a situation which forciblyput an end to Germany's reparations. For two weeks the Frenchgovernment resisted the American proposal, but on July 6, Hooverannounced the acceptance of his moratorium by all the importantcreditor governments. It seemed a miraculous last-minute rescue.But for the German banks the miracle came too late. On July 13,1931, the Darmstadter und Nationalbank, one of Germany's largest,stopped payments. The government was forced to intervene. Ten yearslater, it seems like a legend of long forgotten days that the insolvency ofeven a great bank should immediately have become a nationalcatastrophe; since then we have seen the state master crises of this sort;we have seen the crises themselves pale before more serious problems.But the Bruning government found no means of preventing bankcrashes; it proclaimed a bank holiday, other houses followed theexample of the Darmstadter und Nationalbank, several were put understate control for a long time to come, the flow of money halted, salariesand wages were not paid at all or only in driblets. A domestic Germanmoratorium helped temporarily, and German public opinion,overwrought and filled with a sense of doom, largely adopted thepopular interpretation that this was the final downfall of capitalism.But Hitler gave the following official explanation in his news-