The Great Disorder Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1924

by Feldman, Gerald D.

• ISBN13: 9780195101140
• ISBN10: 0195101146
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780199880195
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-03-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book presents a comprehensive study of the most famous and spectacular instance of inflation in modern industrial society--that in Germany during and following World War I. A broad, probing narrative, this book studies inflation as a strategy of social pacification and economicreconstruction and as a mechanism for escaping domestic and international indebtedness. The Great Disorder is a study of German society under the tension of inflation and hyperinflation, and it explores the ways in which Germany's hyperinflation and stabilization were linked to the Great Depressionand the rise of National Socialism. This wide-ranging study sets German inflation within the broader issues of maintaining economic stability, social peace, and democracy and thus contributes to the general history of the twentieth century and has important implications for existing and emergingmarket economies facing the temptation or reality of inflation.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	xiii
Tables	xv
Abbreviations	xvii
Introduction	3	(1)
The German Inflation in Collective Memory and Economic History	3	(8)
The Germany of Dr. Cornelius	11	(14)
BOOK ONE The Inflation in War and Reconstruction
Part I: The First World War and the Origins of the German Inflation
Financing the War	25	(27)
The Reichsbank, the Financial Preparations for War, and the Banking and Currency Laws of August 4, 1914	26	(11)
War Loans, War Taxes, and Exchange Controls	37	(15)
War Economy and Inflation	52	(47)
What Price War?	52	(14)
The Price of War	66	(7)
German Society Between War and Peace	73	(12)
The Revolutionary Crisis and Its Limits	85	(14)
Part II: Managing the Crises: From the November Revolution to the Kapp Putsch
The Economics of Revolution and Revolutionary Economics	99	(57)
Revolution and Demobilization: November 1918-May 1919	99	(32)
Planning Financial and Economic Reform in the Shadow of Peacemaking, January-July 1919	131	(25)
The Chaotic Path to Relative Stabilization, July 1919-March 1920	156	(55)
Searching for Solutions: The Erzberger Tax Program	156	(9)
The Policies of the Economics Ministry under Schmidt and Hirsch	165	(23)
A Winter of Discontents	188	(23)
Part III: Relative Stabilization and Inflationary Reconstruction, April 1920-May 1921
The Trials and Tribulations of Relative Stabilization	211	(44)
The Relative Stabilization as a Historical Problem	211	(7)
The Crisis of the Summer of 1920 and Its Consequences	218	(9)
Policymaking in the Relative Stabilization	227	(23)
The Gloomy Balance of Relative Stabilization	250	(5)
What Kind of Reconstruction? The German Business Community Faces the Future	255	(54)
A Credit Organization for German Industry?	255	(17)
Restructuring the Private Sector: The Gospel According to Stinnes?	272	(37)
Part IV: Reparations and the Domestic Management of the German Inflation
The Presentation of the Bill	309	(35)
Spa, Brussels, and Paris	309	(20)
Thunder from London: From Sanctions to Diktat	329	(15)
The Domestic Politics of Fulfillment, May 1921-January 1922	344	(41)
Fulfillment and Its Fiscal Limitations	344	(6)
The ``Appropriation of Real Values'' and the Tactics of Fulfillment	350	(8)
The Credit Action of German Industry	358	(19)
Salvation from London?	377	(8)
The Transition to Galloping Inflation	385	(33)
Theory and Policy	385	(21)
The Great Wage Push	406	(12)
The Vicious Circles: From Galloping Inflation to Hyperinflation, January-July 1922	418	(35)
The Paradoxes of Compliance	418	(10)
Fulfillment Policy in Crisis	428	(18)
The Coming of Hyperinflation	446	(7)
Stabilization Debates and Political Crises, August 1922-January 1923	453	(60)
Reparations and the Stabilization Issue, August-November 1922	453	(12)
The German Stabilization Debate and the Fall of Wirth	465	(25)
Business at the Helm? The Policies of the Cuno Government	490	(23)
BOOK TWO The Hyperinflation
Part V: Society, State, and Economy in the Hyperinflation of 1922
The Year of Dr. Mabuse: The Hyperinflation and German Society in 1922	513	(63)
Mark for Mark?	515	(12)
``The Distress of the Intellectual Workers''	527	(28)
``The Most Characterless Land on Earth''	555	(21)
Facing Disaster: The State and the ``Productive Estates'' on the Eve of the Ruhr Occupation	576	(55)
The Financial and Currency Crises	577	(20)
The Economic Crisis	597	(12)
The Social Crisis	609	(22)
Part VI: The Ruhr Crisis, End of the Mark, Currency Reform, and Stabilization
A Disordered Fortress: Passive Resistance, the Cuno Government, and the Destruction of the German Mark	631	(67)
The Insupportable Mark: Financing Passive Resistance	631	(27)
Crisis Mismanagement: Cuno's Foreign Policy in the Ruhr Crisis	658	(11)
Crisis Mismanagement: The Domestic Crisis of the Spring and Summer of 1923	669	(29)
The Politics of Currency Reform, August-October 1923	698	(56)
A Republic in Crisis	698	(10)
The Struggle over a Currency Reform Plan	708	(28)
Dictatorship or Enabling Act? Retaining Democratic Legitimacy	736	(18)
The Politics of Stabilization, October-November 1923	754	(49)
``Regime Change'' or Change of Regime? The Stresemann Government between Communist Insurgence and Fascist Putschism	754	(26)
Introducing the Rentenmark	780	(23)
Saving the Stabilization, December 1923-April 1924	803	(34)
Establishing Credibility	803	(18)
A New Order: Credit Stops and Credit Starts	821	(16)
Epilogue: A Mortgaged Democracy	837	(22)
From Deflation to Deflation	837	(17)
From Geldmenschen to Hitlermenschen	854	(5)
Notes	859	(86)
Bibliography	945	(24)
Index	969