Germany bailing out Greece was and is a myth. Germany (actually the ECB and IMF) bailed out (mostly) German bondholders by assuming Greek national debt. In the process, they crashed the Greek economy even worse.
It didn't help that Greece had just elected a extremist government to replace the corrupt one they had before. But all told, Greeks paid the price, not germans. The German bailout is populist rhetoric, and untrue.
In any case, every major monetary event is unique so "never happened before" is always true. That said, there have been many, many monetary collapses. The roman crisis of the 3rd century is a famous, empire-spanning one. The reason the gold standard was abandoned in 1971 was essentially a run on gold/dollars, the reserve currency of the world.
It didn't help that Greece had just elected a extremist government to replace the corrupt one they had before. But all told, Greeks paid the price, not germans. The German bailout is populist rhetoric, and untrue.
In any case, every major monetary event is unique so "never happened before" is always true. That said, there have been many, many monetary collapses. The roman crisis of the 3rd century is a famous, empire-spanning one. The reason the gold standard was abandoned in 1971 was essentially a run on gold/dollars, the reserve currency of the world.