4 ideas
After France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr in January 1923, the German government paid striking workers in the region with newly printed money as a form of passive resistance. The collapse ended in November 1923 when the Rentenmark was introduced at one Rentenmark to one trillion paper marks and new issuance was strictly limited.
German officials said rising prices came from reparations, the trade balance and foreign speculators, not from printing money. Because prices outran the supply of notes, officials saw a 'shortage of money' and printed more to meet it. That fed the depreciation they thought they were accommodating, so each round of printing justified the next.
Hyperinflation moves wealth from creditors to debtors and from holders of money to holders of real assets. Savers, pensioners, bondholders and people on fixed salaries were wiped out. Industrialists like Hugo Stinnes borrowed paper marks, bought factories, land and goods, and repaid their loans in worthless currency. The result was the destruction of the thrifty middle class, which had kept to the rules and trusted the state's money.
Germans kept measuring value in marks and believed that 'a mark is a mark.' They read the crisis as goods and dollars getting dearer, not as their own money dying. This money illusion delayed any defensive response until savings were gone. It also turned public anger toward profiteers, foreigners and farmers who hoarded food rather than sell it for paper, and away from the printing press.