The failure of Overend & Gurney due to risky railroad investments causes general liquidity panic in London. The resulting crisis and handling by the Bank of England is covered in Bagehot's Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
The Reichsbank aligns with government interests to dump liquidity into the German economy to support the Great War. Germany loses, of course, and is saddled with heavy national debt. The frank manufacture of money is used to pay this debt, as well as fund governmental deficits. Eventually this hyperinflation becomes so unstable that the authorities start over with a new currency. The German economy actually recovers after this until the Great Depression ruins everything.
TODO
The Federal Reserve (under Burns) bows to political pressure from Nixon to keep money supply open during increasingly high inflation. The 1971 Oil Crisis causes a psychological shift in Americans leading to yet more inflation. The problem becomes severe, reaching 13% in '71. Carter puts a man named Volcker into the chair at the Fed and he opts to solve the problem in a novel way. Rather than set interest rates, Volcker chooses a health inflation rate (4%) and announces that he will raise interest rates until that level is met. This kicks off rates of nearly 20% and a bad economic downturn, raising Volcker personally to the position of 'most hated man in America'.
One of many lessons from this (and other) chapters is that Fed Chairmen become widely hated at the exact moment they are doing the most drastic measures to save (or destroy!) the economy.