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The story goes that the US replaced Britain (and Europe) as the seat of Empire after the Suez Crisis but the rot had already set in and teh Yalta and the Bretton Woods Conferences signified that. Economics is politics by other means
As I commented above, don't you think Japan's 1930's imperial adventures in Asia, Italy in Abisinia and Libya, and Germany from Poland to the BeNeLux and from Austria to Norway doesn't count as an imperialistic expansion? Economics is politics by other means
But my point would be that it's not enough to point to imperial ventures as potential causes of war to say that under a Pax Romana, or rule of law of an all-embracing empire, there is more war, more destructive, more bloody, than between independent sovereigns in the absence of such rule of empire.
I hasten to add that I don't like American imperialism. But I don't believe in independent sovereigns as a "solution".
As a result of hyperinflation, there were news accounts of individuals suffering from a compulsion called zero stroke, a condition where the person has a "desire to write endless rows of [zeros] and engage in computations more involved than the most difficult problems in logarithms."
When the new currency, the Rentenmark, replaced the worthless Reichsbank marks on November 16, 1923 and 12 zeros were cut from prices, prices in the new currency remained stable. The German people regarded this stable currency as a miracle because they had heard such claims of stability before with the Notgeld (emergency money) that rapidly devalued as an additional source of inflation. The usual explanation was that the Rentenmarks were issued in a fixed amount and were backed by hard assets such as agricultural land and industrial assets, but what happened was more complex than that, as summarized in the following description. ... After November 12, 1923, when Hjalmar Schacht became currency commissioner, the Reichsbank, the old central bank, was not allowed to discount any further government Treasury bills, which meant the corresponding issue of paper marks also ceased. Discounting of commercial trade bills was allowed and the amount of Rentenmarks expanded, but the issue was strictly controlled to conform to current commercial and government transactions. The new Rentenbank refused credit to the government and to speculators who were not able to borrow Rentenmarks, because Rentenmarks were not legal tender. When Reichsbank president Rudolf Havenstein died on November 20, 1923, Schacht was appointed president of the Reichsbank. ... Eventually, some debts were reinstated to partially compensate those who had been creditors. A decree of 1925 reinstated some mortgages at 25% of face value in the new Reichsmark (effectively 25,000,000,000 times their value in old marks) if they had been held 5 years or more. Similarly some government bonds were reinstated at 2-1/2% of face - to be paid after reparations were paid. Mortgage debt was reinstated at much higher percentages than government bonds. Reinstatement of some debts, combined with a resumption of effective taxation in a still-devastated economy, triggered a wave of corporate bankruptcies.
...
After November 12, 1923, when Hjalmar Schacht became currency commissioner, the Reichsbank, the old central bank, was not allowed to discount any further government Treasury bills, which meant the corresponding issue of paper marks also ceased. Discounting of commercial trade bills was allowed and the amount of Rentenmarks expanded, but the issue was strictly controlled to conform to current commercial and government transactions. The new Rentenbank refused credit to the government and to speculators who were not able to borrow Rentenmarks, because Rentenmarks were not legal tender. When Reichsbank president Rudolf Havenstein died on November 20, 1923, Schacht was appointed president of the Reichsbank.
Eventually, some debts were reinstated to partially compensate those who had been creditors. A decree of 1925 reinstated some mortgages at 25% of face value in the new Reichsmark (effectively 25,000,000,000 times their value in old marks) if they had been held 5 years or more. Similarly some government bonds were reinstated at 2-1/2% of face - to be paid after reparations were paid. Mortgage debt was reinstated at much higher percentages than government bonds. Reinstatement of some debts, combined with a resumption of effective taxation in a still-devastated economy, triggered a wave of corporate bankruptcies.
Hungary had even worse inflation in 1946. Was it only the lack of a common border that stopped them invading Poland?
The new Rentenbank refused credit to the government and to speculators who were not able to borrow Rentenmarks, because Rentenmarks were not legal tender.
In other words, they made Soros attacking the currency illegal.
Interesting.
Refusing to acknowledge the write-off of excess debt leads to a wave of bankruptcies.
Surprise, surprise.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
The German people regarded this stable currency as a miracle
Same in Serbia...We had inflation for quite a few years before but in 1993 we had killing hyperinflation. Then suddenly on 24 th January 1994 (same day when I left Serbia for NZ) New stable dinar was introduced. It looked like miracle...Then I realized that hyperinflation was "manmade"... Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein
But, prior to WW II, Great Britain was the hegemon and the holder of the largest empire. The British Navy was the dominant naval force and GB tolerated the continued existence of other colonial empires, even while contesting Imperial Russia in Central Asia and worrying about the rise of the German navy. The British somewhat reluctantly undertook a policy of de-colonialization after WW II while with the French, it was an involuntary process. The Neatherlands really made no serious effort to reestablish colonial possessions in South East Asia after WW II and only kept some Caribbean islands and one South American Colonial possession. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
I see little evidence that he counted on anything that he could not get by force and suspect that he expected that to be the end game. Hitler never accepted the Versailles Treaty and sought to overturn it by force. To the extent that colonial empires entered into his calculations it was primarily for access to resources and control of trade routes, though he resented Germany having been stripped of her colonies.
Rommel's adventures in North Africa really were just grabbing low hanging fruit unless Germany could seize Egypt and the Suez Canal and, had that been accomplished, he may have been able to secure access to mid east oil as well as to hamper the Allied effort in Asia. I am far from an expert on WW II, Hitler or Germany, but I believe that Hitler saw colonial empires mostly as an aspect of realpolitik.
In effect, WW II may, to a significant degree, have been an echo of pre-WW I imperial rivalries in addition to an attempt to change the outcome of that conflict. Some people have long memories. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
in what way was WWII...caused by imperialist friction ie between empires for reason of empire...
Germany chafed against these conditions from the start. Then there was the occupation of the Ruhr and the hyperinflation. To get out of the box into which the French had put her at Versailles Germany needed to reconstitute her continental empire, which had been largely commercial under the Hapsburgs. The fact that the Nazis called it The Reich instead of The German Empire is largely inconsequential. Germany wanted the functional equivalence of what they had possessed prior to WW I, but wanted better control. The envisioned Thousand Year Reich was to be an empire to end all empires. Hitler hoped that the UK and US could be persuaded to accept German hegemony in Europe and Africa.
That is what I meant by referring to WW II as the echo of the old imperial conflict which Germany had lost. And it is still not inconceivable that Germany might not have succeeded with different tactics, such as not attacking the Soviet Union or Poland. Had Germany been able to seduce Hungary into an alliance and, through Hungary gained access to Romanian oil, without provoking war, who knows what might have developed. Whether this is called imperial conflict or power politics is largely irrelevant. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
This was nations defining their borders and fighting for them, not imperial rivalry. It was Europe still seeking its spatial distribution after the upheavals of nineteenth-century romantic nationalism - which was much more what the Nazis packaged into their tinpot ideology than imperialism. Even the notion that they had a right to vast territories to the East was posited on the need for the great, dynamic German people to have room to grow and settle - Lebensraum - than on an imperial theme.
In other words, in 1930s continental Europe, I don't see empire as a reason for war, I see nationalism.
This was nations defining their borders and fighting for them, not imperial rivalry.
The ideologies of national exceptionalism were virtually universal - to the extent it is surprising that the nations involved could even form alliances. But reality trumps ideology provided there is no hard requirement to repudiate ridiculous ideologies. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Adolf Hitler
In Mein Kampf and in numerous speeches Hitler claimed that the German population needed more living space. Hitler's Lebensraum policy was mainly directed at the Soviet Union. He was especially interested in the Ukraine where he planned to develop a German colony. The system would be based on the British occupation of India: "What India was for England the territories of Russia will be for us... The German colonists ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The German services will be lodged in marvellous buildings, the governors in palaces... The Germans - this is essential - will have to constitute amongst themselves a closed society, like a fortress. The least of our stable-lads will be superior to any native."
So while the actual German pre-wwI colonies did not matter so much, the idea of a colonial empire was very much involved. One can speculate about what would have happened if France and Britain had not declared war on Germany in September 1939, but backed down again. Would Hitler have gone directly for the Soviet Union then?
I would argue that either way Htiler attacked the order upheld by Britain, as that order included that no single power might dominate the European continent. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
One can speculate about what would have happened if France and Britain had not declared war on Germany in September 1939, but backed down again. Would Hitler have gone directly for the Soviet Union then?
Unlikely. The whole purpose of the Russo-German partitioning of the Baltic region, from the German point of view, was to leave Germany free to curbstomp France without having to worry about an Eastern front. If war had not been declared, they'd probably have made a slightly greater effort to pretend that they were simply allying with Denmark and Norway rather than conquering them. But that would likely be about it.
After all, the Germans knew that the peace in the East would be unlikely to last forever, and they had already tried and failed to secure a deal with the Western powers to go after Russia together. So the whole "curbstomp France" project came with a sell-by date.
They might have tried partitioning the Balkans with either Russia or Turkey, but then they would have risked their relationship with Italy. Which was of ideological, if not particular practical, value to Germany.
A swedish kind of death:
I would argue that either way Htiler attacked the order upheld by Britain, as that order included that no single power might dominate the European continent.
The British Empire, however, did not include the European continent, and Britain could support but not impose that policy (Hitler thought Britain would accept the change he intended to bring about). Again, we're in the field of the definition of nations (subtext nationalism), their extent and borders, and their relative power positions, because some at least (Germany most) considered those questions as not yet having been satisfactorily settled.
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