If you're interested in German reparations, you might be interested in research being done by German-speaking economists who finally got access to German statistical archives after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Albrecht Ritschl is excellent.
He does a good job of demonstrating that the Germans were able to pay reparations but did not want to do so for political reasons.
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A historian at U.Va., Stephen A. Shuker, does a pretty good job of showing how US private lenders actually financed German reparations. They borrowed the money from us, then defaulted, and Hoover forgave the debts.
Of course Hitler objected to the reparations, all Germans did, but what really galled him was when US bankers quit lending money to Germany in the late 1920s. The mainstream explanation, that US investors decided to go with the stock market instead, is probably too simplistic, I think the bankers were afraid of default.
Hitler, of course, blamed the Jews.
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But if your argument is that Wilson got us into the war, we beat Germany, the Germans had to pay reparations, and they didn't like it so put Hitler in power, why not blame Wilson's mother and father for having him in the first place? ;^) |
