The most complicated problem started in 1933, when Germany began to default on interest payments on state, municipal and corporate bonds. To give her a breather, President Hoover arranged a moratorium on all payments in 1931. Shortly after, Adolf Hitler repudiated the whole debt; he charged that it was caused by reparations and was one of the injustices of the Versailles Treaty.* As the market value of German bonds tumbled, Hitler's agents quietly bought up blocks of them at fractions of their par value, stored them away in Berlin
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