[azernik]

You have to distinguish between inflation (which every country has, on varying levels) and hyperinflation. Zimbabwe's inflation hit 89.7E63% per year. No, that is not a typo, it is actual powers of 10. In contrast, in Syria inflation is on the order of 20%/year, driven by real-world difficulties in importing and producing goods rather than a drastic expansion of the money supply. That is, when inflation is directly caused by disruptions to the economy, it's on the same order of magnitude as those disruptions.

In the German case, there was no massive damage to the economy; the war had been fought on the territories of France and Russia, and the only major disruption was a brief occupation of and general strike in the Rhineland, affecting maybe 10-20% of the German economy.

A last note: recessions are generally accompanied by deflation, though there the cause-and-effect relationship is complicated.

[RobertoG]

>>"You have to distinguish between inflation (which every country has, on varying levels) and hyperinflation. "

We agree. Inflation is caused by too much money chasing too few goods. That can happen because the money grows or the goods shrink. My point is that the historical episodes of hyperinflation are originated by the later.

>>"In the German case, there was no massive damage to the economy [..]"

From https://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/reparations/ :

"Berlin had failed to pay a £1 billion interim instalment, leading to the occupation of three industrial cities along the Rhine."

"In April the London meeting of the Commission fixed a final reparations figure of £6.6 billion. The reparations instalments were to be paid quarterly in gold or foreign exchange backed by gold, along with tradable commodities such as steel, raw iron or coal. Berlin was informed that any defaults on these payments would lead to the occupation of the industrial Ruhr region and the confiscation of raw materials and industrial equipment there. Though this revised amount was less than two-thirds the figure first proposed, it remained well beyond the capacity of the war-ravaged German economy"

I don't think hyperinflation could be avoided after that.

[azernik]

"War-ravaged" is a weird way for that site to describe an economy with its physical infrastructure entirely intact. The only main "drop" in productive capacity was the reparations payments and confiscations, which while harsh, didn't reduce the size of the German economy by a factor of a trillion (the total depreciation of the Mark from 1918 to 1924).

Inflation could have definitely been avoided by harsh taxation of the general population... but again, the government tried to dig itself out of the budgetary hole by printing money instead. (A budgetary hole exacerbated by the government promising to pay the salaries of workers on strike in the Rhineland.)

[jsjohnst]

> Zimbabwe's inflation hit 89.7E63% per year. No, that is not a typo, it is actual powers of 10.

Yep, I keep Zimbabwe currency from around then as a reminder. I have a paper note for 1/2 a Zimbabwe dollar (aka 50 cents) and a few others printed less than two years later with amounts up to 100 TRILLION dollars.