German inflation in the 1920s was not the result of a policy of monetary stimulus by the German central bank and treasury trying to stave off a recession. First of all, inflation didn’t just happen to Germany. Other Mittel-European countries, such as Austria, Hungary, and Poland, experienced hyperinflationary episodes at the same time, and none of these episodes was due to the enactment of Keynesian policies. Their common origins lay instead in the fact that World War I had been financed through debt rather than through taxes, which lowered postwar exchange rates and made imports more expensive, which in turn fostered inflation. The inflation pent-up from that earlier period ebbed and flowed for almost a decade.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 162