It's January 1930. From the epicenter of New York City, the shock waves of the Wall Street

crash ripple out across the globe. It will take time for the full impact of the financial earthquake to hit, but when it does, it will cause devastation.

Millions across the world will lose their jobs, their savings, their homes, their lives.

People will suffer and starve. Crime and corruption will soar. unemployment will go through the roof.

Welcome to the Great Depression.

In the past decades, there's been a growing interdependence between nations, between the great financial

hubs where shares are traded on international exchanges.

When New York sneezes, London catches a cold, as the saying goes.

And as for Berlin, the Wall Street crash will ultimately render this patient terminal.

There's a cruel irony here, for despite the crippling war reparations imposed by the

Treaty of Versailles, the new post-war Vymah Republic, against all odds, had begun to claw its way back.

It was resembling the old German powerhouse of yore.

It had even been readmitted to the International Club

joining the League of Nations. But there's a harsh reality to Germany's

revival. The recovery has been underwritten by massive American loans,

under the Dawes plan, then the Young Plan. The bottom line is that Germany is

in hock to the US for $7 billion, a staggering

112 billion in today's money.

There's been little thought given as to how or when these deaths might be repaid.

It's a can that's been kicked down the road.

Gustav Straisaman, the revered German statesman who died on the eve of the Wall Street crash

that warned of the fragility of the arrangement.

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