While the Reichsbank could try to defend the currency by raising rates and tightening credit, which would increase the returns on holding mark denominated assets/deposits for creditors, and thereby attract more capital from abroad while discouraging capital flight at home, it would also crush domestic demand, reduce imports, and help close the trade deficit. That would require an unimaginably severe contraction in consumption, which would have been intolerable for this already impoverished and conflict-ridden society to bear.
