How did the Great Depression affect people in Holland?
I’m not sure about Holland specially, but I can talk about how European nations were affected in general….. The internatinoal debt sturcture was a factor that contributed to the Depression. When the war came to an end in 1018, all the Eurpean nations that had been allied with the US owed large sums of money to American banks, sums much too large to be repaid out of their own shattered economies. That was one reason why the Allies had insisted, though Woodrow Wilson opposed, on reparations payments from Germany and Austria. Reparations, they believed, would provide them with a way to pay off their own debts. But Germany and Austria were themselves in economic trouble after the war; they were no more able to pay the reparations than the Allies were able to pay their debts. The American government refused to forgive or reduce the debts owed to them. Instead, American banks began making large loans to European governments, with which they paid off their earlier loans. Thus debts and repa
