Posted on 09/28/2010 6:49:01 AM PDT by C19fan
World War One finally ends for Germany on Sunday - 92 years after the guns fell silent and nearly nine million men lay dead - as it pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies. A final payment of 69.9 million euros, or £59.3 million, writes off the crippling debt which was the price for one world war - and laid the foundations for another.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Well, I think it was one day it was NOT chump change, then it was not what it used to be, and the day after that it was chump change. And then it started inflating by the hour.
The only government that "disintegrated" because of the starvation blockade was the Weimer Republic, albeit fourteen years lafter. It never recovered from the humilitiation of the peace treaty, which it had foolishly thought would be based on the 14 points (translated and airdropped before the Armistice). The pro-democrats were already in power in Germany by the time of the Armistice but the starvation blockade (condemned by the likes of Herbert Hoover and even British troops on the Rhine who thought starving German children was bad pr) continued for eight more months!
BTW, the mass slaughter of babies in their cribs and Japanese Christians in Nagasaki didn't accomplish anything. Truman received a surrender deal (e.g. the Japanese could keep the emperor) he probably could have had even before the bomb.
“but they didn’t, you know, bayonet women and children.”
Please,, no serious scholar anywhere today thinks the “rape of Belgium” is anything more than British propaganda.
The Germans went through Belgium to outflank the French and it worked. They didnt care about Belgium. The British were using the attack *through* Belgium as a cause to go to war. They were trying to bolster their case with fake stories of widespread atrocities that are so provably wrong today as to nearly be laughable.
And the world believed the British, because as you know,, they were a *highly* moral nation back then and would NEVER lie./
(just like they wouldn’t stuff passenger liners full of war cargo, knowing it would make the passengers likely to be attacked by submarine, and help drag the USA into the war)
That's what I thought too, and it was suprisingly inexpensive for such a piece of history.
This alone was worth the thread to me,,, it just never occurred to me that many of those notes survived. But on further thought, with no value at the time,,,it makes sense that they would have been abandoned here and there.
That's the way it went down.
Reparations in 1920 were already well below the 1914 German military budget.
Cuno's papers show that he deliberately was testing the French to see what they would do.
Poincare really did seize the Ruhr.
The German central bank really did start printing money so Germany could technically abide by the Treaty - while denying the French the raw materials they really wanted.
It sounds like "demand side" economics.
Exactly the opposite, actually.
It was the original anti-supply sider Keynes himself who claimed that reparations would hurt the German economy.
The supply side case, which I am making, is that Germany's massive industrial output was quickly brought back to full capacity through the supply of raw materials to France as reparations payments.
Taxes that previously went to maintaining a large standing army were redirected to paying German workers to produce lumber, iron, steel, coal and other goods.
That production was used to pay down external debt (i.e. the reparation obligations) rather than engage in deficit spending, as Keynes suggested.
Hyperinflation was a political decision.
Most of the war had been fought on French and Belgian soil - Germany's infrastructure was largely untouched while France's was largely ruined.
France knew that at the end of the war, Germany could begin rearming immediately while France was years behind, and that German revenge would come quickly.
So, the Allies decided that Germany would not be allowed to rearm and that their industrial output would be diverted from German rearmament to the rebuilding of French industrial infrastructure and French rearmament.
Reparations were cheaper than rearmament, but Germany did not want to bankroll its own subjugation.
Hence German reluctance to send France the needed commodities for rebuilding, and Germany's willingness to embrace an inflationary policy - to not only use currency instead of commodities for reparations, but to reduce the buying power of those reparations.
It was monetary policy as an instrument of geopolitics.
I wonder why everybody always talks about Germany but never mentions Prussia. I mean, how many states get formally dissolved after a war. If there had been no Prussia, there would have been no world wars.
Tried is right. The failed to prevent the conditional surrender from happening. The rebellion did not fail primarily because a record was hidden. It failed because it did not receive sufficient support from the military. In any case, a failed rebellion hardly proves anything one way or the other
At the time the decision was made too surrender, no decision had been made regarding the status of the Emperor. That came after the Japanese decided to surrender. The reason they left Hirohito in place had more to do with concerns about stability in Japan and growing Soviet influence in the region. It was NOT on the table by either side PRIOR to the 2nd bomb being dropped.
Simply not true. In agreeing to the Postdam Declration, Hirohito specifically added this condition:
"The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam on July 26th, 1945, by the heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China, and later subscribed to by the Soviet Government, with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler.
As a result, there was an instense debate among Truman's advisors on whether to accept this condition. Jimmy Byrnes, Truman's Secretary of State, said we should keep on fighting but James Forrestal, Admiral Leahy and Stimson urged Truman to agree. Truman overrode Byrnes, arguing that "the thought of wiping out our another 100,000 people [is] just too horrible," and ordered a reply to be drafted accepting the the Japanese offer.
Like most of you postings CK, you are totally devote of accuracy or fact.
I love you too.
COL. BILL LIND ACTUALLY GIVES A VERY SOLID ARGUMENT THAT WE FOUGHT ON THE WRONG SIDE IN WW ONE. I HEARTILY AGREE
Serbia accepted 9 1/2 of the 10 pts of Austria-Hungary’s July Ultimatum. They declared war anyway.
I am reminded of the scene in Band of Brothers when Easy, 506 PIR captured Eindhoven. There the women collaborators were lucky. The men were being shot. Dutch resistance wasted no time in doing their duty.
Then later, Easy is motoring by a barn when the door bursts open, three German Wermacht are shoved into the open and summarily executed by pistol by a French officer. Yea, Europeans have such a sparkling record in treatment of those they consider enemies, no matter their culture. In this, it all seems to be the same. Stones and glass houses.
French and Belgium troops under Napoleon did as much or worse in German principalities, duchies and kingdoms. British troops were restrained by penalty of death under Wellington during the Peninsular Campaign. Russians in the East were none too gentle in either WWI or WWII. Down the annals of history, I am sure the list goes on and on. It is my opinion it would have been worse for German civilians had the Germans not surrendered prior to a major occupation of German soil during WWI. Allied propaganda had vilified German troops and people to such an extent it could not have been otherwise.
Of the long list of things Wilson is guilty of, putting American soldiers on European soil to try to settle yet another of their deadly squabbles is the top of my list. That was a European war. If they wanted to murder one another it was their business, not ours.
By the way, American commanders proved just as vigorous as their French and British counterparts in throwing their troops into German killing fields. They just didn’t have enough time to lose two or three million. It wasn’t the commanders that were so different, it was, and still is, the ethics of the troops under them. Even under the exteme duress of the battlefield, Americans, steeped in their reliance on God and their tradition of the importance of the individual, restrained themselves unlike any European army in history could.
The NappyOne
In other wars too. Colin Powell nailed it in a speech in 2003: "We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works."
France and England were incredibly wealthy and powerful in 1914 because of the vast colonial expansion of the 19th century.
Because of earlier French occupation, historic religious disputes and competing centers of power, Germany was late to the game of becoming a unified national state and also way behind on colonial expansion.
Germany was belatedly trying to become a world power and a naval power. However, Germany was already becoming the world's leading industrial power.
Geography made it difficult for Germany to compete navally and colonially, but geography combined with industry also gave Germany great advantages as a continental military power.
France and England did not want Germany to compete with them on the world stage and Russia did not want Germany to expand eastward.
Germany and Austria-Hungary saw a fullscale war as an opportunity to rebalance the global system - by conquering the Low Countries and France, Germany could demand that France turn over part or all of its colonial empire to Germany, enabling Germany to not only become a colonial power but establish enough global ports to become a naval power to rival Britain.
In a nutshell - WWI was about Germany making up for a century of lost time and lost opportunities in what they thought would be a one-year military campaign - the model being the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, this time on steroids.
I am in the camp that blames FDR for this unconditional surrender notion and believe his surprise announcement at Casablanca resulted in the unnecessary deaths of millions of people and made the use of two atomic weapons inevitable. Great men at the time of that little act of self aggrandizement thought the worst of it and predicted many would die as a result. Churchill, in order to preserve the appearance of Allied unity, grudgingly went along with it – after the fact – and it proved to be poor judgment. Stalin thought FDR a madman for it.
Truman could have reversed FDR’s foolishness, but for the political price he thought he would have to pay to do so. While Nagasaki “accomplished nothing” neither did the firebombing of Tokyo, the bombing of Dresden, nor Sherman’s march to the sea. All were employed in a desperate effort to end bloody wars. Had Japan not raped Nanking and bombed Pearl Harbor, those babies in their cribs and Japanese Christians would have been spared. Who are you to judge through the lens of retrospect, accusing only American efforts, any unconditional force used to bring that war to an end? Nobody at the time had all the facts you believe you have.
The NappyOne
True....but I don't subscribe the the theory of collective guilt e.g. a baby in a crib is just a baby in the crib. The Japanese Christians in Nagasaki were always a key segement of the peace/anti-militarist sentiment in Japan. What useful point was served by killing thousands of them?
Of course, deaths of innocents are inevitable in war but this was different. The dropping of the bombs represented INTENTIONAL killing of civilians to promote terror thus violating all the ancient rules of war as Japan had done at Nanking.
As to your other point, plenty of high placed Americans at the time thought that the dropping of the bombs was senseless (and were not afraid to say so before the fact) including Eisenhower and George Marshall. In his meeting with a Truman staff member at the time, Ike said "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it was not necessary to hit them with that awful weapon." I agree entirely with your general point about unconditional surrender. Truman could have reversed the policy and, in fact, partially, but belatedly, did so in agreeing to keep the emperor.
Nagasaki accomplished the realization by the Japanese government that they could no longer insist on their list of unacceptable conditions for surrender.
The traditional claim that Japan refused to surrender after Hiroshima is not true. The claim that the bombing of nagasaki was gratuitous is not true.
neither did the firebombing of Tokyo,
The firebombing of Tokyo is what started the Japanese government discussing the topic of surrender "with honor" in the first place.
the bombing of Dresden,
While the level of carnage that actually occurred at Dresden was completely unforeseen, the original stated objective of the Dresden bombing did accomplish its goal: to disrupt the Nazis' efforts to reinforce their Eastern Front and prevent the Soviet Belorussian Front and Ukrainian Front from linking up.
nor Sherman’s march to the sea.
The purpose of the March was twofold: (1) to demonstrate to the people of the Confederacy that Union armies could operate at will in their heartland and that their own armed forces could not defend them and (2) to isolate Lee from Johnston. Both missions accomplished.
Good points,, and also many actions throughout the War contributed almost nothing to the war except to assure the continuation of British and French colonies after the war. Countless died to make sure the colonial possessions remained in the fold.
Most of the operations in the Mediterranean were designed to protect British possessions in the middle east. Same for most of the actions in SE Asia.
American airmen in India observed that the English seemed more interested in maintaining the colonial order there, than in taking actions that might free india, even if it would help the war effort.
Much of late WWII was actually the battle to re-establish the pre-war colonies in Indochina, China, the middle east, and Africa.
Europe created decades more misery and millions more dead AFTER WWII because they wanted to continue their dictatorships around the world.
The only "unacceptable" condition that was left at that point remained keeping the emperor, which Truman finally agreed to after Nagasaki....despite his earlier refusal to accept this condition. I can't understand why so many here are willing to accept the INTENTIONAL use of terror (e.g. killing of thousands of innnocents including babies in the crib) as a legitimate method of war. We prosecuted people for war crimes who did a lot less.
Incorrect.
The terms they wanted after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki were:
(1) Retention of the existing Japanese political system including the Emperor.
(2) Any disarmament and demobilization operations to be conducted internally by the Japanese government.
(3) All POWs to be immediately returned, including accused war criminals - whom Japan would agree to try internally by Japanese law in Japanese courts.
(4) No US military presence in Japan, Korea or Taiwan, with Japan open to further negotiations on the status of Korea and Taiwan.
After Nagasaki, Japan agreed to occupation, international justice for war criminals, supervised disarmament, the liberation of Korea and Taiwan and the dissolution of most aspects of the Japanese political system except the Emperor.
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