Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Nuremberg, a new movie about the trial to hold Nazi war criminals accountable for their actions during the Second World War,

ends with this prescient quote.

The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.

While accusations of fascism and Nazis are tossed around far too often these days,

it is essential that we know the conditions that made the Nazi rise to power possible.

The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, placed all the blame for the war on Germany.

It demanded that the country pay reparations. The treaty was demoralizing, and in many ways

unjust, designed to turn Germany into a second-rate power that could never again wage war.

Clearly, that was a miscalculation. The reparations were so extreme that it became impossible for Germany to

ever pay them. Instead, the German government attempted to inflate the nation out of debt by

increasing the money supply. People began burning paper money for heat because it was cheaper than

buying wood. Women would bring wheelbarrers full of Deutsche Marks to the store but could not even

buy a newspaper with it.

In fact, the exchange rate between the mark and the U.S. dollar at the time was one trillion to one.

So cigarettes were a more reliable currency. In 1923, a loaf of bread in Germany cost

428 billion marks. Postage stamps cost millions of marks. Savings were destroyed. Workers were

destitute. University graduates and doctors drove taxis. The only Germans who prospered were those

with real assets, such as landowners, financiers, and industrialists. So Germany became quite polarized.

Moderate political parties became increasingly

irrelevant. Many industrial workers, trade unionists, and intellectuals turned to communism.

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