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> Remember when France paid even more in 1815 and 1871 The reason for anything big and complicated like a war could probably occupy thousands of pages of discu

> Remember when France paid even more in 1815 and 1871 The reason for anything big and complicated like a war could probably occupy thousands of pages of discussion. But I'd like to jot down what I see as one major difference here between Germany's experience to close out WWI and France's and most other countries' experience in past wars. Unlike many large-scale past wars in Europe, the sequence of events in WWI wasn't exactly "Some country's leaders get angry for one stupid reason or another, those countries fight and one side ends up winning, and then both sides come to the negotiating table and come up with a relatively even-handed peace-deal based on the actual events of the war that felt like a fairly won or lost outcome that almost anybody could come to accept". You had legitimate peace overtures from the Central powers midway through WWI that were blocked because the Allies were behind the scenes agitating to get the Americans involved on their side. And then at the end, because the inclusion of American resources so totally flipped the outcome of the war (what would have likely been a modest Allied victory with reasonable peace negotiations changed into a big win and the Allies having the power to demand whatever they wanted), the Allies could exact revenge and gain incredible wealth + continental power over their biggest economic rivals. Do your history books go into the German Revolution of 1918–1919? And the real poverty and unseemliness of the Weimar Republic? All of these events and the fallout is arguably tied into this major difference with WWI being flipped by an outsider. And it's easy to see how this difference contributed to some really bad times later on. Hell, I shouldn't even say WWI and WWII, IMO this time period was really one big war with a long intermission.

shakow 4y ago
> the Allies could exact revenge and gain incredible wealth + continental power over their biggest economic rivals. That's what the Germans wanted everyone to believe. Now, if you compare Versailles (1918) with Brest-Litovsk, Sèvres, or even Versailles (1871) (or even the Septemberprogramm), it's far from awful for the time. Germany had to pay reparations that were in the norm for the period, and lost territories that were basically ethnically either Polish or Danish. It was still the first powerhouse of Europe, and had an intact land- and industrial base, especially in comparison to France or Belgium, where – on top of battle-caused destruction – they carefully destroyed economical infrastructure (e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44575822?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/44575822?seq=3#metadata_info_ta...). > And the real poverty and unseemliness of the Weimar Republic? If that's what you learned in your history books, think about changing them. The only thing that led to the infamous economical failure of the Weimar republic is its aversion to pay reparation (~B150$ today) in a normal manner. Instead, they printed stupid amount of money to buy foreign currency to pay reparation with. Of course, this led to a monetary crash – out of wich Germany promptly got out by simply switching to a better handled new mark[1,2,3,4]. It was a pure product of the hopeless German economic policies, that they went back to being the economic powerhouse of Europe as soon as they got their duck in a row, and the difficulties they met thereafter were the baseline for all the nations after the war[5,6]. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/economic-research/conferences/~/media/files/research/events/2000_10-20/Fisher_GermanEconomy.pdf https://www.minneapolisfed.org/economic-research/conferences... https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_R... [3] Wages of Destruction, Tooze [4] Confessions of the old wizard, Schacht [5] https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 [6] https://slidetodoc.com/europe-between-the-wars-the-economics-of-the/ https://slidetodoc.com/europe-between-the-wars-the-economics...

shakow 4y ago

> the Allies could exact revenge and gain incredible wealth + continental power over their biggest economic rivals. That's what the Germans wanted everyone to believe. Now, if you compare Versailles (1918) with Brest-Litovsk, Sèvres, or even Versailles (1871) (or even the Septemberprogramm), it's far from awful for the time. Germany had to pay reparations that were in the norm for the period, and lost territories that were basically ethnically either Polish or Danish. It was still the first powerhouse of Europe, and had an intact land- and industrial base, especially in comparison to France or Belgium, where – on top of battle-caused destruction – they carefully destroyed economical infrastructure (e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44575822?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/44575822?seq=3#metadata_info_ta...). > And the real poverty and unseemliness of the Weimar Republic? If that's what you learned in your history books, think about changing them. The only thing that led to the infamous economical failure of the Weimar republic is its aversion to pay reparation (~B150$ today) in a normal manner. Instead, they printed stupid amount of money to buy foreign currency to pay reparation with. Of course, this led to a monetary crash – out of wich Germany promptly got out by simply switching to a better handled new mark[1,2,3,4]. It was a pure product of the hopeless German economic policies, that they went back to being the economic powerhouse of Europe as soon as they got their duck in a row, and the difficulties they met thereafter were the baseline for all the nations after the war[5,6]. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/economic-research/conferences/~/media/files/research/events/2000_10-20/Fisher_GermanEconomy.pdf https://www.minneapolisfed.org/economic-research/conferences... https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_R... [3] Wages of Destruction, Tooze [4] Confessions of the old wizard, Schacht [5] https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 [6] https://slidetodoc.com/europe-between-the-wars-the-economics-of-the/ https://slidetodoc.com/europe-between-the-wars-the-economics...