by Oui
Wed Mar 5th, 2025 at 01:59:37 PM EST
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11th November 1918: The Armistice of Compiègne ends fighting in WW1
The World War I armistice was signed in a train carriage dubbed `the wagon that ended the war'. "You had to break the will of the German military, whatever the cost, in November 1918
The Reception of President Woodrow Wilson on his Arrival in Paris, December 16, 1918
Weimar's Lesson: It's the Violence, Not the Speech | Informed Comment |
As comparisons between contemporary American politics and the rise of the Nazi Party are frequently invoked in the media [and blogosphere] , it's crucial to draw one specific lesson from the history of Weimar Germany, the democratic state that existed from 1918 to 1933. The rise of Hitler and the Nazis was not the result of Weimar's failure to punish hate speech. Instead, it was the futile attempt to suppress such speech while not acting effectively to curb political violence that allowed the Nazis to rise and gain power.
During the Nazis' rise, there were laws in place that criminalized hate speech. In the fifteen years leading up to Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933, for example, more than 200 legal prosecutions were initiated in response to antisemitic speech and hundreds of Nazi-affiliated newspapers were shut down. Hitler himself was banned from speaking in several German states from 1925 to 1927, while prominent Nazi figures were sentenced to prison.
Rather than curbing the spread of Nazi antisemitic ideology, legal prosecutions of Nazis undermined the credibility of Weimar leaders and inadvertently aided the Nazi movement by providing a platform for their racist and fascist beliefs.
Depression years tariffs and trade wars ...
Trade Blocs and Trade Wars during Interbellum
Militarization by Hitler to beat high unemployment
- Tough economic sanctions or import tariffs do not make peace ☮️
- Fallacy of a war economy to build lives, jobs and a well-balanced economy
Gross Failure of Capitalism ... Growth in Inequality
War Prosperity: The Fallacy that Won't Die | 6 Feb. 2003 |
Bob Davis and Gref Jaffe's article (Feb. 4) on the likely economic consequences of a U.S. war against Iraq errs by giving past wars credit for creating positive economic effects. This hoary fallacy, it seems, just can't be killed.
The strongest case for it has long been World War II, which Davis and Jaffe claim "clearly was a boon for the U.S. economy." But a boon in what sense? Unemployment fell during the war entirely because of the buildup of the armed forces. In 1940, some 4.62 million persons were actually unemployed (the official count of 7.45 million included 2.83 million employed on various government work projects).
During the war, the government, by conscription for the most part, drew some 16 million persons into the armed forces at some time; the active-duty force in mid-1945 numbered in excess of 12 million. Voila, civilian unemployment nearly disappeared. But herding the equivalent of 22 percent of the prewar labor force into the armed forces (to eliminate 9.5 percent unemployment) scarcely produced what we are properly entitled to call prosperity.
Yes, officially measured GDP soared during the war. Examination of that increased output shows, however, that it consisted entirely of military goods and services. Real civilian consumption and private investment both fell after 1941, and they did not recover fully until 1946. The privately owned capital stock actually shrank during the war. Some prosperity. (My article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Economic History, March 1992, presents many of the relevant details.)
It is high time that we come to appreciate the distinction between the government spending, especially the war spending, that bulks up official GDP figures and the kinds of production that create genuine economic prosperity. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in the aftermath of World War I, "war prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings."
The First World War Deeply Affected a Generation of Austrian Economists | Mises Wire |
The First World War carries a special significance in the history of Austrian economics. It not only symbolized the triumph of militarism and nationalism over the all-too-brief flourishing of liberalism, but also sowed the seeds of fascism, socialism, and the Second World War that ultimately forced the emigration of the Austrians from their native country. The early Austrians were first-hand witnesses to the Great War, and Mises wrote about it in detail in his early book Nation, State, and Economy (1919), in which he tried to explain the ideological and economic causes of the conflict.
WARS CREATE ILLIBERAL "DEMOCRACIES" 🔥 🔥 🔥
Excellent opposition leader PMQ House Ukraine solidarity security intelligence sharing military costs are not an wise "investment"
