So its fairly clear that NatSoc gave the country an economic boom but left it completely fucked with no option other than war to save what was left of its economy.
I'm wondering what post WW1 Germany could have done to recover effectively (if slowly) without ending up in that position.
The simple answer is to renegotiate the terms of the treaty of Versailles. It was pretty much an economic death sentence, which didn't even benefit the Allies during the depression.
Alternatively, there is evidence that the entire central European economy was improving shortly before the Nazis came into power. Even countries like Austria, which weren't immediately affected by Nazi legislation, experienced an economic upturn before the Nazis took over
Economic booms are not a good thing
What's clear to me is that France and England were total assholes during the Versailles Convention. I mean, they were downright vicious to Germany and did everything to fuck that country into oblivion.
The French and English were arrogant and intolerable throughout.
One of the French ambassadors, whose name escapes me at the moment, showed total contempt for Woodrow Wilson's 14 points by sarcastically remarking, "Even God had only TEN commandments!" (Smarmy prick.)
Basically, the English and French at Versailles set up all the conditions necessary for the rise of natsoc and made WWII a foregone inevitability.
>The simple answer is to renegotiate the terms of the treaty of Versailles.
Surely this still leaves post war Germany in ruins with no decent infrastructure to speak of and no industry.
How would you go about reviving the economy of a nation from this point without creating a boom like Hitler did leaving the only option war?
>Basically, the English and French at Versailles set up all the conditions necessary for the rise of natsoc and made WWII a foregone inevitability.
I'm aware of this, see above.
>English and French at Versailles set up all the conditions necessary for the rise of natsoc
Only point I don't agree with. There was much more to it than that.
Remember, Germany wasn't the only country affected by the treaty of Versailles. But they were the only country to have Nazis rise to power.
Basically it was a super long plan to seize power, both through democracy and false flags
It was the Brits who declared war on Germany to save their own economy (and global dominance).
They couldn't sit back and watch the German economy soar past theirs, as that would make German influence on the world greater than that of Britan
Germany's infrastructure was relatively unharmed after WW1. The issue was that the terms of the treaty required most of Germanys production of natural resources would be transferred to France and the UK. They were still making money but they had to give that money away immediately
Same thing before ww1
Germany's gdp was over 60% military production paid for with nonexistent credit. Nobody was afraid of the German economy, it was destined to fail. They were only worried about all the tanks and bombs that Germany had built, and rightfully so I might add.
okay, good! Still, I'm sure there are those who weren't/aren't aware of it. You know how uneducated those on Sup Forums can be.
As for an alternative economic recovery for post-imperial Germany, I don't see how it could have been possible as long as Germany was required to pay off literally billions (trillions today) in reparations to England and France.
Even if Germany could have gotten back on its feet quickly it still would have been impoverished by those mandatory reparations.
The United States could have done a lot more to prevent England and France's brutality toward Germany but, at that time, the United States was like a big, raw boy full of vitality, spirit and strength but lacking in the experience and wisdom to do much more than roar loudly and beat its chest a little.
Personally, I think Wilson could have been more aggressive in his assertion to implement at least some of his 14 points but, being the intellectual pacifist that he was, he thought he could lead the French and English to arrange better terms with Germany. Sadly, that just didn't happen and the English and French were left free to dominate the proceedings at Versailles.
I fully agree with you that there was far more to it than that. After all, Russia, Italy and other European nations were involved but I think you can concede that England and France were dominant in those proceedings.
If Russia had still been under Imperial Czarist rule chances are that country might have been the dominant one in the proceedings but, since they'd been taken over by the Bolsheviks not more than a year before they were pretty much out of the picture (war wise and negotiation wise.)
See Adjacent countries who were included in the terms of the treaty but did not adhere to Nazi legislation still experienced economic growth.
Economies have a natural tendency to fix themselves. Trying to force it to be fixed too quickly results in Nazi Germany. Fear the boom,not the bust
>Nobody was afraid of the German economy, it was destined to fail
That's just completely wrong. The growing German economy was the main reason for the war (ww1 and ww2 really was the same war with a pause).
Before ww1 Germany even starting building a railway to Baghdad, circumventing the Suez canal. Just one example out of many that Germany was about to turn in to an economic superpower in Europe.
The Brits and French couldn't handle that.
Im not talking about the beneficiaries of the terms, I'm talking about the nations who those terms are against.
If person A and person B both get hit with a penalty resulting in the same economic disaster, and person A changes everything while person B does nothing, and they both begin to improve, how can you claim the reason for the improvement is the change?
>I don't see how it could have been possible as long as Germany was required to pay off literally billions (trillions today) in reparations to England and France.
Yeah this is my issue with it and its why I started this thread
One of the things I thought about was encouraging a barter system then subsidizing foreign investment and keeping wages low, then using the tax from the foreign investment to fund local startup businesses, would this be effective at all?
We're talking about WW2 here. Germany pre-WW1 wasn't Nat soc
What I think is absolutely tragic about all of this is that, pre-WWI, Germany had risen to become the premier economic power in Europe. They had more trackage, were producing more machinery and dry goods and were just an economic powerhouse prior to 1914.
What an incredible shame that Queen Elizabeth's nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm, was so insecure that he honestly believed that Germany was, and I quote, "Europe's footstool", unquote.
Sorry but that man was a walking train wreck!
He did serious damage to the German economy by engaging in a massive naval arms race with England between 1900 and 1912. (England was the first to build the new Dreadnought class battleships: the first all-big-gun ships.)
Being insecure, Kaiser Wilhelm, of course, had to have his own fleet of Dreadnoughts.
>Here's a tremendous irony: those dreadnoughts were so expensive to build that Germany kept them ported for most of the war for fear that they might lose even one in a naval battle!
Wages were already low, and there was no money to subsidize anything with
So without a renegotiation the only option was to wait it out?
Yeah I know, but the reason for both wars was the same.
Pretty much. Trying to force a quick fix usually only makes things worse. in this case, that quick fix cost millions of lives and the political ramifications are still being observed today
Absolutely untrue. The reason for WW2 was that it was economically impossible for Germany to avoid war. In WW1, it was politically impossible for Germany to avoid war.
Totally different ends of the spectrum
Hmm... On the surface that slow-growth economic plan seems like a reasonable solution. Sure, it would have helped the German people by giving them a chance to establish cottage industry export businesses (much like the Japanese did at the end of WWII) but, in order for that to be truly effective, great repair and revitalization of the national economy and GDP would have had to happen, too.
Even then economic recovery would have been excruciatingly slow because of the mandatory reparations payments. Many, if not most, would still have suffered tremendously which would still have left the door open for the rise of NatSoc, although that rise may not have occurred as swiftly as it did.
Use nature as a lens. Animal-A population booms once they are introduced to new habitat without prey and with lots of resources (food).
Humans don't have prey. So we boom when we find natural resources that we can exchange for the nessesities of life.
Naturally booms only last till we run out of resources... then we go into decline.
There is no way for Germany to recover effectively after wwi War was the only option. Hitler did all the world a service at the expense of dead wwii vets. Death is required for a healthy economy.
>Naturally booms only last till we run out of resources... then we go into decline.
This would be true iprior to the 12th century
>but the reason for both wars was the same
WW2 was inevitable with Hitler's rise to power
he created an economic boom and set up the Russians as the enemy of Germany (he stated that Communism was the natural enemy of NatSoc showing that he planned the war with them beforehand).
He knew his bubble left him with only one option: massive investment into arms and then a war.
>Trying to force a quick fix usually only makes things worse.
and this is because it creates a boom eventually leading to another crash due to inevitably running out of money?
>Even then economic recovery would have been excruciatingly slow because of the mandatory reparations payments.
yeah this is why this was always a fun thing for me to think about but I always seem to come to the conclusion it would be incredibly slow or require a massive leniency in the treaty of Versailles
Also where you would get the capital to subsidize the investment with the treaty still in tact is a problem I'm yet to be able to overcome.
>Sure we got bombed into oblivion and everyone I know is dead, but at least I had that job making bullets for a solid 8 years.
What's funny is that Nazi currency was becoming more and more worthless as the war went on. They had a war based currency. As stop as they stop taking over land, they start crashing.
They took a poor country and turned it into a poor country of rubble that everyone hates.
Oh also while we're on the subject of econ does anyone have any good entry level books on macro and micro econ?
It's not about running out of money, it's about devalued capital. When everyone pays for everything with imaginary money, eventually those things become as worthless as the money.
Although Woodrow Wilson was a good president I've always felt he was the wrong man for that period of history. A stronger man with a better, wiser cabinet would have seen the economic necessity of helping Germany to pay off its reparations debt to England and France, perhaps even paying it off entirely for them.
Certainly, even then, the United States was well into being the most economically powerful nation on Earth and the US of that time could easily have afforded to help bring that about.
That being considered, I have to think that, for their lack of foresight and willingness to truly help, the US is just as guilty as England and France for Germany being driven to the brink of extinction and allowing the rise of Hitler and NatSoc.
>rebuilt germany
>have army and prosperity
>can transition the economy to whatever Hitler and his advisors want to do at any time
How was the economy growing a disaster if they weren't in debt to a bank?
Bombed into oblivion...
Ironically, Germany wasn't bombed anywhere near as bad as Japan was.
Churchill, himself, said that Japan was "ground to powder" and he was right.
Still, there's that very good point you make about Hitler taking a poor country and turning it into a poor country of rubble that everyone hated.
(I'm eating some very lovely crackers (what the English call biscuits) and Edam cheese. I wish I had a way to share it with all of you.)
We're not discussing NatSoc Germany, we're discussing Post WWI Germany (1918-1933)
There is no such thing as the "German economic miracle."
International bankers and corporations invested in Germany and propped up the Hitler regime as a force to combat Communism.
Stop watching the greatest story never told
Except it was the allies that turned his country into rubble.
You can argue he threw the war on purpose, but it was the allies reaction to him saying no to their economic warfare.
So in 1930s, if the allies agreed to have the peace talks Hitler offered instead of churchill giving his war speech, Hitler said he would disassemble his military and transition to a different kind of economy. The offer was massively rejected and thus Hitler had 2 options, collapse or use what he had spent decades building for a chance to break free from the banks.
If the banks had been willing to share power or cared about the loss of life, they would have told Churchill and Poland to negotiate. Instead we got pic related
Yes! I wholeheartedly agree that it was the allies that reduced Germany to a ruined wreck because, historically, it's true.
Okay, this's the first time I've ever heard that "Hitler threw the war on purpose." Personally that doesn't make a speck of sense to me.
>1: why would he do that?
>2: what would he have to gain by doing that?
>3: How would that benefit the German people?
Allied bombing raids both commenced and intensified after the Luftwaffe under Goering commenced what the British called The Blitz when the Germans bombed London.
Surprising and Ironic, Goering never had any intention of bombing London!
That happened as a result of a squadron of German bombers getting lost and off course during a night bombing raid, mistaking London for their designated target and bombing it, anyway.
Goering, being an insufferably arrogant twit tried to save face of that huge blunder by continuing the London Night Raids and because Hitler liked it. But, really, their initial plan was to bomb military and industrial targets only.
He had many advisors.
Some with jewish connections that he called honorary aryans.
He claimed Dunkirk was him being a "good sport" and that Churchill did not return the favor...
It's world war 2 and you give the jewish puppet Great Britian a second chance to come genocide the german race out of existence?
I get how thats christian like and nazi idealogy to not be monsters, but COME ON. The western front could have been CLOSED at Dunkirk.
Ah okay, thanks user.
Okay, the only historically verifiable peace negotiations that I know of was those between England's then prime minister Neville Chamberlain going to Berlin to negotiate a non-aggression pact with Hitler in 1938. That's also when he basically handed the Sudetenland over to Hitler as well as an act of appeasement.
As for International Bank involvement in all of that, had it been an actual, historical fact I would know of it. It's entirely unknown to me.
>Please do stop trying to inject International Jewish Conspiracy into an otherwise very nice historical discussion. All that does is ruin it for everyone else.
Okay, you're making less and less historical sense, here. This does not serve what seems to be your intended purpose of shedding historical light on an otherwise well known and well documented historical period.
Okay, well, it appears that all the other real historians have left the thread. I'm out as well.
>As always I hope you all have a wonderful day!
thanks for the help earlier ITT, have a nice day user
Also Trump is on soon if you're interested.