The Gold Standard -- effectively tying available currency to tangible assets in precious metal -- was considered an essential means of avoiding catastrophic inflation and the destruction of the currency in the 1920's in Europe and the U.S. They feared the worthless currency of the Wiemar Republic, for example, as the worst possible outcome. As a result, taxes tended to be raised, and spending cut, by governments anxious to ensure that their currencies remained stable. Modern economists often blame everything from the Great Depression to the rise of Adolf Hitler to the Second World War to the Jewish Holocaust on rigid adherence to the Gold Standard. Is this reasonable? What happens in politics and economics in the world, if Britain and the U.S. simply don't apply the Gold Standard in the 1920's?