We Will Have to Fight the Germans Again in 20 Years

1919 book by John Maynard Keynes

The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Author	John Maynard Keynes
Country	United kingdom
Language	English
Discipline	Economic
Publication engagement	1919

The Economical Consequences of the Peace (1919) is a book written and published past the British economist John Maynard Keynes.^[ane] Afterward the First World State of war, Keynes attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as a delegate of the British Treasury. In his book, he argued for a much more generous peace, not out of a want for justice or fairness – these are aspects of the peace that Keynes does not bargain with – but for the sake of the economic well-being of all of Europe, including the Allied Powers, which the Treaty of Versailles and its associated treaties would foreclose.

The book was a best-seller throughout the world and was critical in establishing a general opinion that the treaties were a "Carthaginian peace" designed to trounce the defeated Primal Powers, peculiarly Germany. It helped to consolidate American public stance against the treaties and against joining the League of Nations. The perception by much of the British public that Federal republic of germany had been treated unfairly was, in plough, a crucial cistron in later public support for the appeasement of Hitler.

The success of the book established Keynes' reputation as a leading economist,^[2] particularly on the left. When Keynes was a key player in establishing the Bretton Woods system in 1944, he remembered the lessons from Versailles also equally the Bang-up Low. The Marshall Programme, which was promulgated to rebuild Europe after the Second Globe War, was similar to the system proposed by Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

Context [edit]

Keynes left Cambridge University to piece of work at the Treasury in 1915. He worked daily on financing the war try during World War I. That disturbed many of the pacifist members of the Bloomsbury Group of which he was a member. Lytton Strachey sent him a note in 1916 asking Keynes why he was even so working at the Treasury.

Keynes quickly established a reputation equally 1 of the Treasury'southward nigh able men and travelled to the Versailles Conference equally an advisor to the British Regime. In preparation for the conference, he argued that there should preferably be no reparations or that German reparations should be express to £2,000 million. He considered that there should be a general forgiveness of war debts, which, he considered, would benefit U.k.. Lastly, Keynes wanted the US government to launch a vast credit program to restore Europe to prosperity equally soon as possible.

His general business concern was that the Versailles conference should set the weather condition for economic recovery. However, the conference focused on borders and national security. Reparations were set at a level that Keynes perceived would ruin Europe. Woodrow Wilson, the President of the Usa, who represented his state at the briefing, refused to countenance forgiveness of war debts and United states of america Treasury officials would not even hash out the credit plan.

During the conference, Keynes' health deteriorated, and he resigned from his position in frustration as a protest^[three] on 26 May 1919, before the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June. He returned to Cambridge and wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace over two months in the summertime. Although a best seller, and highly influential, especially to those who already had doubts about the Treaty,^[3] it has likewise been described as "a diatribe".^[four]

Contents [edit]

Conference [edit]

Keynes described the conference as a clash of values and world views of the principal leaders, pitting what has been called "the cynical traditions of European power politics [confronting] the promise of a more enlightened order."^[5]

Keynes describes Wilson as guardian of the hopes of men of good will of all nations.

When President Wilson left Washington he enjoyed a prestige and a moral influence throughout the earth incomparable in history. His bold and measured words carried to the peoples of Europe above and beyond the voices of their own politicians. The enemy peoples trusted him to carry out the compact he had made with them; and the Allied peoples acknowledged him not as a victor but but almost as a prophet. In addition to this moral influence the realities of power were in his easily. The American armies were at the acme of their numbers, subject area, and equipment. Europe was in complete dependence on the food supplies of the U.s.a.; and financially she was even more than admittedly at their mercy. Europe non but already owed the United States more than she could pay; but only a large measure of farther assistance could save her from starvation and bankruptcy. Never had a philosopher held such weapons wherewith to bind the princes of this world. How the crowds of the European capitals pressed about the railroad vehicle of the President! With what marvel, anxiety, and hope we sought a glimpse of the features and begetting of the human of destiny who, coming from the W, was to bring healing to the wounds of the aboriginal parent of his civilization and lay for us the foundations of the future.^{[half dozen]}

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau shaped the consequence of the conference more anyone else:

[Clemenceau] took the view that European ceremonious war is to be regarded equally a normal, or at to the lowest degree a recurrent, state of affairs for the future, and that the sort of conflicts between organised Bang-up Powers which have occupied the past hundred years volition also engage the next. According to this vision of the time to come, European history is to be a perpetual prize-fight, of which France has won this round, but of which this round is certainly not the last. From the belief that essentially the old order does not alter, being based on human nature which is ever the aforementioned, and from a consequent scepticism of all that grade of doctrine which the League of Nations stands for, the policy of France and of Clemenceau followed logically. For a peace of magnanimity or of fair and equal handling, based on such 'ideology' as the Fourteen Points of the President, could only have the effect of shortening the interval of Federal republic of germany'south recovery and hastening the mean solar day when she volition one time once more hurl at France her greater numbers and her superior resources and technical skill.^[7]

Treaty [edit]

The heart of the book is his two profound criticisms of the treaty. Firstly, he argues as an economist that Europe could non prosper without an equitable, effective and integrated economic system, which was impossible by the economic terms of the treaty. Secondly, the Allies had committed themselves in the Ceasefire agreement to disquisitional principles regarding reparations, territorial adjustments, and evenhandedness in economic matters, which were materially breached by the treaty.

Keynes reviews the facts whereby the Armistice was based on credence by the Allies and Germany of Wilson's Fourteen Points and other terms referred to in making the Armistice.

On 5 October 1918 the German regime addressed a brief Notation to the President accepting the Fourteen Points and request for peace negotiations. The President'south reply of viii October asked if he was to understand definitely that the German government accepted 'the terms laid down' in the Xiv Points and in his subsequent addresses and 'that its object in entering into discussion would be only to agree upon the applied details of their awarding.' He added that the evacuation of invaded territory must be a prior condition of an ceasefire. On 12 October the German government returned an unconditional affirmative to these questions; 'its object in entering into discussions would be only to agree upon applied details of the application of these terms'. … The nature of the contract between Germany and the Allies resulting from this exchange of documents is plain and unequivocal. The terms of the peace are to be in accordance with the addresses of the President, and the purpose of the peace conference is 'to discuss the details of their application.' The circumstances of the contract were of an unusually solemn and binding character; for one of the conditions of it was that Deutschland should agree to armistice terms which were to exist such as would leave her helpless. Germany having rendered herself helpless in reliance on the contract, the honour of the Allies was particularly involved in fulfilling their office and, if there were ambiguities, in non using their position to take advantage of them.^[8]

Keynes summarises the near important aspects of the Fourteen Points and other addresses by Wilson that were function of the Armistice agreement.

The Fourteen Points – (3) 'The removal, and so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.' (iv) 'Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will exist reduced to the everyman betoken consistent with domestic safety.' (5) 'A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims', regard being had to the interests of the populations concerned. (vi), (7), (8), and (11) The evacuation and 'restoration' of all invaded territory, specially of Belgium. To this must be added the passenger of the Allies, claiming compensation for all impairment done to civilians and their holding by land, by sea, and from the air (quoted in total above). (8) The righting of 'the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the thing of Alsace-Lorraine'. (thirteen) An contained Poland, including 'the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations' and 'assured a gratuitous and secure admission to the bounding main'. (14) The League of Nations.^[9]

Before the Congress, 11 February – 'There shall be no annexations, no contributions, no castigating amercement.... Self-conclusion is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.... Every territorial settlement involved in this war must be fabricated in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival States.'^[10]

New York, 27 September – (i) 'The impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to whom nosotros exercise not wish to be simply.' (two) 'No special or separate interest of whatsoever single nation or any group of nations can be made the ground of any function of the settlement which is not consistent with the common interest of all.' (3) 'There tin can be no leagues or alliances or special covenants and understandings within the full general and common family of the League of Nations.' (4) 'In that location can exist no special selfish economic combinations inside the League and no employment of whatsoever course of economic boycott or exclusion, except as the ability of economical punishment past exclusion from the markets of the world may exist vested in the League of Nations itself as a means of subject and command.' (v) 'All international agreements and treaties of every kind must be made known in their entirety to the rest of the earth.'^[11]

Poor collecting woods in the Vienna Woods and waiting for the trams to render to Vienna, wintertime of 1919-1920

Keynes points to the textile violation of the terms regarding reparations, territorial adjustments, and an equitable economic settlement as a absorb on the laurels of the western allies and a primary cause of a future state of war. Given that he was writing in 1919, his prediction that the next war would begin twenty years hence had an uncanny accuracy.

Europe [edit]

One of the most serious charges Keynes leveled against the Treaty and the men who created information technology is that it paid almost no attending whatever to the economical hereafter of Europe:

The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe,– zippo to brand the defeated Primal Powers into practiced neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new states of Europe, cipher to repossess Russia; nor does it promote in any way a meaty of solidarity amongst the Allies themselves; no arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy, or to adapt the systems of the Erstwhile Globe and the New.

The Council of Four paid no attention to these bug, being preoccupied with others,– Clemenceau to crush the economical life of his enemy, Lloyd George to practice a deal and bring habitation something that would pass muster for a calendar week, the President to exercise nothing that was not only and right. It is an boggling fact that the fundamental economical problems of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was the one question in which information technology was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four. Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of politics, of balloter chicane, from every point of view except that of the economical time to come of united states whose destiny they were handling.^[12]

Keynes predicted the causes of high inflation and economic stagnation in postwar Europe:

Lenin is said to accept declared that the all-time mode to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes non only at security, but at confidence in the disinterestedness of the existing distribution of wealth. ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing ground of social club than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of devastation, and does it in a manner which non one man in a one thousand thousand is able to diagnose.^[13]

He explicitly pointed out the relationship between governments printing money and aggrandizement:

The inflationism of the currency systems of Europe has proceeded to boggling lengths. The various belligerent Governments, unable, or too timid or too brusque-sighted to secure from loans or taxes the resources they required, have printed notes for the balance.^[14]

Keynes also pointed out how authorities price controls discourage product:

The presumption of a spurious value for the currency, by the force of constabulary expressed in the regulation of prices, contains in itself, even so, the seeds of last economic decay, and soon dries up the sources of ultimate supply. If a man is compelled to commutation the fruits of his labors for paper which, as feel soon teaches him, he cannot use to purchase what he requires at a toll comparable to that which he has received for his own products, he will keep his produce for himself, dispose of it to his friends and neighbors as a favor, or relax his efforts in producing information technology. A system of compelling the exchange of commodities at what is not their existent relative value not just relaxes production, just leads finally to the waste and inefficiency of barter.^[15]

The Economic Consequences of the Peace detailed the relationship between German regime deficits and inflation:

In Deutschland the total expenditure of the Empire, the Federal States, and the Communes in 1919–20 is estimated at 25 milliards of marks, of which not in a higher place 10 milliards are covered past previously existing taxation. This is without allowing anything for the payment of the indemnity. In Russia, Poland, Hungary, or Austria such a thing as a budget cannot be seriously considered to exist at all. ... Thus the menace of inflationism described above is not but a product of the war, of which peace begins the cure. It is a continuing phenomenon of which the end is not yet in sight.^[xvi]

Keynes ended with this ominous alarm:

Economical privation proceeds past easy stages, and so long as men suffer information technology patiently the exterior earth cares very little. Concrete efficiency and resistance to disease slowly diminish, but life proceeds somehow, until the limit of human endurance is reached at last and counsels of despair and madness stir the sufferers from the lethargy which precedes the crisis. The homo shakes himself, and the bonds of custom are loosed. The power of ideas is sovereign, and he listens to whatever instruction of promise, illusion, or revenge is carried to them in the air. ... Merely who can say how much is endurable, or in what direction men volition seek at last to escape from their misfortunes?^[17]

Not too many years later. Adolf Hitler was to write in Mein Kampf:

What a use could be made of the Treaty of Versailles. ... How each 1 of the points of that treaty could exist branded in the minds and hearts of the German language people until 60 meg men and women observe their souls aflame with a feeling of rage and shame; and a torrent of burn down bursts along every bit from a furnace, and a volition of steel is forged from it, with the mutual cry: "We will have arms once again!"^[18]

Samuel W. Mitcham comments:

Niccolò Machiavelli advised the prince to never inflict small hurts. This is exactly what the Allies did with the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. The German language people were humiliated, and their organized religion in democracy – which was fragile to begin with – was almost totally destroyed. All the same, they were not annihilated. ... The Allies should have either totally destroyed and dismembered Frg or else have made a sincere endeavor to make a fair and just peace with her and bring her into the family of nations as a full partner. Merely doing neither, they set up the stage for Adolf Hitler and the Second Earth State of war. In my view, it is not going as well far to state that the Nazi dictator should have worn a stamp on the seat of his pants with three words on information technology: "Made at Versailles."^[19]

German influence on Keynes [edit]

While at Versailles, Keynes had a serial of meetings with Carl Melchior of Max Warburg's bank in Hamburg. Melchior was a lawyer and 1 of the German representatives at the peace conference. Through Melchior, Keynes received a dire picture of the social and economic country of Germany at the time, which he portrayed as being ripe for a Communist revolution. Keynes accepted this representation, and parts of the text of The Economic Consequences roughly parallel the language of the German counter-proposals to the typhoon Allied proposal of terms.^[twenty]

According to historian Niall Ferguson:

To say that Keynes'southward argument in the book was the same every bit that put frontward by German financial experts at the conference would exist to exaggerate. Only the resemblances are very shut; nor did Keynes deny their influence on him. Like them, he blamed the French for the 'Carthaginian' economic provisions of the Treaty and denounced the Reparations Commission equally 'an musical instrument of oppression and rapine'. Like them, he insisted that Germany 'had not surrendered unconditionally, merely on agreed terms as to the general grapheme of the peace' {the Fourteen Points and subsequent American notes}. And like them, he stressed that the loss of Germany's merchant marine, her overseas assets, her coal-rich territories and her sovereignty in matters of merchandise policy severely limited her chapters to pay reparations. ... Nor did Keynes omit the apocalyptic warnings he had heard from Melchior at Versailles, predicting a Malthusian crisis in Deutschland, and the destruction of capitalism in Cardinal Europe...^[20]

Keynes himself characterized the German language counter-proposals as "somewhat obscure, and also rather disingenuous."^[21]

[The German negotiators] assumed ... that [the Allied negotiators] were secretly as anxious as the Germans themselves to arrive at a settlement which bore some relation to the facts, and that they would therefore be willing, in view of the entanglements which they had gotten themselves into with their own publics [in promising that "Germany will pay"], to practice a little collusion in drafting the Treaty,– a supposition which in slightly unlike circumstances might have had a good deal of foundation. As matters actually were, this subtlety did not benefit them, and they would have done much better with a straightforward and candid estimate of what they believed to exist the amount of their liabilities on the one paw, and their capacity to pay on the other.^[22]

In add-on to his meetings in Versailles, at the invitation of Max Warburg'southward brother Paul Warburg, Keynes attended an Amsterdam conference of bankers and economists in October 1919, and he drafted there with Paul Warburg a memorandum of appeal to the League of Nations calling for a reduction in High german reparations.^[20]

Success [edit]

Keynes' book was released in late 1919 and was an immediate success:^[4] it became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic: information technology was released in the U.s.a. in 1920. The scathing sketches of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau proved to exist very pop and the work established Keynes' reputation with the public as a leading economist. In six months, the volume had sold 100,000 copies worldwide,^[23] with translations into 12 languages. Information technology restored Keynes' reputation with the Bloomsbury Group, which had been tarnished by his work for the Treasury during the war. Keynes returned to Cambridge to work as an economist, where he was regarded as the leading student of Alfred Marshall.

Georges Clemenceau,
Premier of France

"...a foremost believer in the view of High german psychology that the German language understands and can understand nada only intimidation, that he is without generosity or remorse in negotiation, that there is no advantage he will not have of you, and no extent to which he will not demean himself for profit, that he is without honor, pride, or mercy. Therefore you must never negotiate with a German language or deactivate him; you must dictate to him."^[24]

Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States

"[I]f ever the activeness of a single individual matters, the collapse of The President has been one of the decisive moral events of history. ... He had no programme, no scheme, no constructive ideas whatever for clothing with the flesh of life the commandments which he had thundered from the White House. ... [Northward]ot only was he ill-informed, simply his heed was slow and unadaptable ... There can seldom accept been a statesman of the commencement rank more than incompetent than the President in the agilities of the council bedchamber."^[25]

David Lloyd George,
Prime Minister of the Britain

"[he had an] unerring, almost medium-like sensibility to every ane around him ... watching the visitor, with vi or seven senses non bachelor to ordinary men, judging grapheme, motive, and subsconscious impulse, perceiving what each [human] was thinking and even what each was going to say side by side, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal that best suited the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his auditor..."^[26]

Vittorio Emanuele Orlando,
Prime Government minister of Italy

"[Clemenceau] alone among the Four could speak and understand both languages [that is, French and English], Orlando knowing but French and the Prime Minister and President merely English language; and information technology is of historical importance that Orlando and the President had no direct means of communication."^[27]

Impact in the United States [edit]

As well as being highly successful in commercial terms in the U.s.a., the book proved to be highly influential. The book was released only before the US Senate considered the treaty and confirmed the beliefs of the "irreconcilables" against American participation in the League of Nations. Equally well, the book also heightened the doubts of the "reservationists", led by Henry Cabot Lodge, over the terms of the treaty and created doubts in the minds of Wilson's supporters. Lodge, the Republican Senate leader, shared Keynes' concerns about the severity of the treaty on Germany and believed that it would have to be renegotiated in the futurity. Keynes played a disquisitional role in turning American public opinion against the treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, merely it was Wilson's poor management of the issue and a number of strokes he had that would be decisive: America would not participate in the League of Nations.

Bear upon in the United Kingdom [edit]

Keynes' portrayal of the treaty as a "Carthaginian peace" – a roughshod peace which has the intent of crushing the losing side – quickly became the orthodoxy in academic circles and was a common opinion in the British public. Information technology was widely believed in Britain that the terms of the treaty were unfair. That was influential in determining a response to the attempts past Adolf Hitler to overturn the Versailles Treaty specially in the period leading upwards to the Munich Agreement. In Germany, the book confirmed what the overwhelming bulk of the people already believed: the unfairness of the treaty. France was reluctant to use armed force to enforce the treaty without the support of the British Government. Prior to late 1938, the force of public opposition to prospective involvement in another war meant that British support for the French position was unreliable.

Reception [edit]

The French economist Étienne Mantoux criticised the bear upon of Keynes' book in his book The Carthaginian Peace: or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes past proverb that it did more than than any other writing to discredit the Treaty of Versailles. Mantoux compared The Economical Consequences of the Peace to Edmund Shush'south Reflections on the Revolution in French republic because of the firsthand influence on public stance. Mantoux sought to discredit Keynes' predictions of what the consequences of the Treaty would be. For example, Keynes believed European output in iron would decrease, but by 1929, iron output in Europe was up 10% from the 1913 figure. Keynes predicted that German iron and steel output would decrease, simply by 1927, steel output had increased past xxx% and iron output increased past 38% from 1913 (within the pre-war borders). Keynes also argued that German coal mining efficiency would subtract, just labour efficiency by 1929 had increased on the 1913 figure by xxx%. Keynes contended that Federal republic of germany would be unable to export coal immediately, but German language net coal exports had grown to 15 million tons within a year and by 1926 the tonnage exported had reached 35 million. Keynes too claimed that German language national savings in the years after the treaty would be less than two billion marks: notwithstanding, in 1925, the German national savings figure was estimated at six.four billion marks and, in 1927, 7.6 billion marks.

Keynes also believed that Germany would be unable to pay the more than ii billion marks in reparations for the side by side 30 years, just Mantoux contends that German rearmament spending was 7 times as much equally that effigy in each twelvemonth between 1933 and 1939.^[28] René Albrecht-Carrié in 1965 claimed that Weimar Deutschland, well before Hitler secretly began to rebuild the German military, could not keep up its reparations payments, which were renegotiated several times, and were later the discipline of several reorganizational schemes such as the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. He also argued that reparation payments and other requirements of the Treaty crippled the German economy, a view shared by the British, who proposed in 1922 the cancellation of all reparations and debts arising from the war – including Allied debts to the U.s.a.^{[notes 1]} – a proposal which did not find favour in France or the US. However, the historian Sally Marks, writing in 2013, claimed that Deutschland had the financial capacity to pay reparations.^[29] She as well claimed that Germany paid minimal reparations after 1921 and that "it is hard to conceive that something that was non happening or that was occurring only minimally could take acquired all that is often attributed to reparations, including the great inflation".^[30]

The breakdown of the German language economy brought great distress to the High german people, which acquired them to lose the minimal religion in democracy they possessed, and made them more sympathetic to the appeals of Hitler and the Nazi Party, for whom the overthrow of the "dictat" of Versailles was a main goal. When the economy rebounded, and foreign loans – particularly from the United States – became available to Germany, the Weimar government compounded the problems past borrowing prodigious amounts, even using funds from foreign loans to pay their reparations. Then, when Wall Street crashed in 1929, the Great Depression began and precipitated a catamenia of deep unemployment.

The historian A. J. P. Taylor has written:

The war, far from weakening economic resources, stimulated them besides much. The most serious blow inflicted past the war economically was to men's minds, not to their productive powers. The one-time order of financial stability was shaken, never to be restored. Depreciated currencies, reparations, war debts, were the keen shadows of the inter-war period – all imaginary things, divorced from the realities of mine and factory.^[31]

Taylor also claimed that Mantoux'south book refuted Keynes' thesis.^[32] Albrecht-Carrié in 1965 argued that Keynes was overall prescient in his long-term assay of the affect of the Treaty.^[4]

The historian Ruth Henig wrote in 1995 that "about historians of the Paris peace conference now take the view that, in economic terms, the treaty was not unduly harsh on Germany and that, while obligations and amercement were inevitably much stressed in the debates at Paris to satisfy electors reading the daily newspapers, the intention was quietly to give Deutschland substantial help towards paying her bills, and to see many of the German objections by amendments to the way the reparations schedule was in practise carried out".^[33] Sally Marks claimed in 2013 that for "nearly 40 years, historians of twentieth-century affairs have argued that the Versailles treaty was more reasonable than its reputation suggests and that it did not of itself cause the Depression, the rise of Hitler, or World War II".^[34] Marks also claimed that Keynes' book was a "vivid but warped polemic" that is "long discredited by scholars" and which Keynes regretted writing.^{[35] [36]}

Some scholars have portrayed the Treaty equally less harsh than information technology was seen to be in the immediate aftermath of the Paris Peace Conference. Gideon Rose, for instance, sees it as "more balanced" than it seemed at the time, and "a mixture of discordant elements that was neither Carthaginian nor Metternichian",^[37] while Max Hastings calls the peace treaty "clumsy" but writes that "[I]f the Germans had instead been dictating the terms as victors, European liberty, justice and democracy would take paid a dreadful forfeit.".^[38] David Stevenson argues that neither the Armistice nor the Peace Treaty fabricated World War Two inevitable – as claimed by many scholars – and that "the peacemakers have had an undeservedly bad press. ... [T]hey were feeling their way in unprecedented circumstances, but the settlement that was synthetic was more flexible than its critics best-selling, and could either have accommodated a lasting reconciliation with the new Republican government in Germany or ensured that it remained militarily harmless. The real tragedy of the inter-war years is that it did neither... The Treaty could take stopped another bloodbath if information technology had been upheld."^[39] This, of course, is antithetical to the arguments of Keynes, or at least his followers, who draw a direct line between the economic conditions created past the Peace Treaty and the ascension of belligerent regimes in Europe. For his role, revisionist historian Niall Ferguson is another who does not share the view that the Treaty of Versailles was castigating and an economic disaster:

In reality, the peace terms were not unprecedented in their harshness, and the German hyperinflation was mainly due to the irresponsible fiscal and budgetary policies adopted by the Germans themselves. They idea they could win the peace by economic means. In British minds they did. The Germans were also more successful than any other country in defaulting on their debts, including the reparations demanded from them by the Allies. However, this victory was pyrrhic: it was won past democratic politicians at the expense of commonwealth and their own power.^[40]

Keynes on rearmament [edit]

During the 1930s, Keynes, unlike many of his followers, was an early advocate of rearmament to deter what he referred to as the "bandit powers" of Deutschland, Japan and Italy. In July 1936, Keynes wrote a alphabetic character to the editor of the New Statesman:

A state of inadequate armament on our role tin only encourage the brigand powers who know no argument but force, and will play, in the long run, into the hands of those who would like us to accede by inaction in these powers doing pretty much what they like in the earth. [...] Tin can I non persuade you that the collective possession of preponderant force by the leading pacific powers is, in the conditions of today, the all-time balls of peace.^[41]

Later on Globe War II [edit]

Keynes was a highly influential advisor to the British regime during the Second Earth War. He was head of the British team that negotiated the Bretton Woods Understanding with the American team led past Harry Dexter White. In general, the Understanding suggested a monetary system similar to that proposed past Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

His proposal for an International Immigration Union formed the footing of proposals for the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development – afterward the World Bank and Bank for International Settlements. All the same, the operation of these institutions was non as liberal as Keynes would have wished.

Keynes was also responsible for negotiating financial support for United kingdom during the Second Earth War. While United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland struggled to afford the terms offered during the war, the credit offered past the US was much more than generous. Furthermore, the Western powers did not enquire for reparations from the defeated powers, although the Soviet Union forced reparations from East Germany, which it controlled.

In 1948 the U.s. initiated the Marshall Plan of aid to assistance in the rebuilding of Europe, Allies and Axis countries akin – except for the Soviet Wedlock, which refused to participate, and its Eastern European satellites, which were blocked from receiving aid by the Soviets. The Plan was in many ways similar to what Keynes had proposed at Versailles after Globe War I.^[42] As Keynes predicted, reparations and war debts were paid for past loans from the US, leaving no one better off.

The postwar system led to one of the greatest general increases in prosperity in human history. From 1948 to 1971, world trade increased by an boilerplate annual charge per unit of 7.27% and industrial production grew by an average of 5.vi%. That contrasts with the interwar period where globe trade actually fell in the 1930s, and where world industrial product grew fitfully in the 1920s until it was striking past the Great Depression.

See also [edit]

• The Large Four (World State of war I)
• Paris Peace Conference, 1919
• Treaty of Versailles
• Globe War I reparations

References [edit]

Informational notes

1. ^ The UK was overall a creditor nation in relation to World War I, so the proposal was not, equally it may showtime appear, cocky-serving. ^[four]

Citations

1. ^ Keynes 1919.
2. ^ John Maynard (2019). Michael (ed.). The Economic Consequences of the Peace: With a new introduction by Michael Cox. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN978-3-030-04758-0.
3. ^ ^{a b} Strachan 2003, p. 333.
4. ^ ^{a b c d} Albrecht-Carrié 1965, p. 114.
5. ^ Stevenson 2004, p. 417.
6. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 34–35.
7. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 31–32.
8. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 52, 55.
9. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 56–57.
10. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 57.
11. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 57–58.
12. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 211–12.
13. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 220.
14. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 223.
15. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 224–25.
16. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 232.
17. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 233–35.
18. ^ Hochschild 2011, p. 358.
19. ^ Mitcham 1996, p. 43.
20. ^ ^{a b c} Ferguson 1999, pp. 400–03.
21. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 204.
22. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 205.
23. ^ "Economic Consequences of the Peace" Marshall Library of Economics website, University of Cambridge
24. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 29.
25. ^ Keynes 1919, pp. 34, 39–forty.
26. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 37.
27. ^ Keynes 1919, p. 27.
28. ^ Heilperin 1946, pp. 930–34.
29. ^ Marks 2013, pp. 644–645.
30. ^ Marks 2013, pp. 645.
31. ^ Taylor 1963, p. 280.
32. ^ Taylor, A. J. P. (1991) The Origins of the 2nd World War. London: Penguin. p.344
33. ^ Henig, Ruth (1995). Versailles and Later on, 1919-1933 (2d ed.). Routledge. p. 65. ISBN978-1-134-79873-v.
34. ^ Marks 2013, pp. 632.
35. ^ Marks 2013, p. 636, p. 656.
36. ^ According to Elizabeth Wiskemann: "On the forenoon after the German "election" [the Reichstag ballot of 29 March 1936] I travelled to Basle; it was an exquisite liberation to reach Switzerland. It must take been only a little subsequently that I met Maynard Keynes at some gathering in London. "I practise wish you had not written that book", I found myself saying (meaning The Economical Consequences, which the Germans never ceased to quote) and and so longed for the footing to consume me upwardly. But he said, merely and gently, "So do I."" – Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Europe I Saw (London: Collins, 1968), p. 53.
37. ^ Rose 2010, p. 48.
38. ^ Hastings 2013, p. 563.
39. ^ Stevenson 2004, pp. 411–12, 430.
40. ^ Ferguson 1999, p. 397.
41. ^ Bredel 2007, p. 35 n59.
42. ^ Reinert & Jomo 2008.

Bibliography

• Albrecht-Carrié, René (1965). The Meaning of the Showtime World War. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
• Bredel, Ralf (2007). The Upstanding Economy of Conflict Prevention And Development: Towards A Model for International Organizations. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN9789004153059.
• Ferguson, Niall (1999). The Compassion of War: Explaining World State of war I . New York: Basic Books. ISBN0-465-05712-8.
• Harrod, Roy Forbes (1951). The Life of John Maynard Keynes. Macmillan.
• Hastings, Max (2013). Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN978-0-307-74383-1.
• Henig, Ruth (1995). Versailles and After, 1919-1933 (second ed.). Routledge. ISBN978-i-134-79873-5.
• Heilperin, Michael A. (December 1946), "The Carthaginian Peace, or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes past Étienne Mantoux", The American Economic Review, 36 (five): 930–934, JSTOR 1801820
• Hochschild, Adam (2011). To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918. Boston, Massachusetts: Mariner Books. ISBN978-0-547-75031-six.
• Johnson, Paul (1991). A History of the Mod World: From 1917 to the 1990s. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd.
• Keynes, John Maynard (1919). The Economical Consequences of the Peace (1 ed.). London: Macmillan & Co., Limited. p. 279. Retrieved 2 June 2016 – via Internet Archive.
• Mantoux, Étienne (1946). The Carthaginian Peace: Or the Economic Consequences of Mr Keynes. Oxford University Press.
• Marks, Sally (September 2013). "Mistakes and Myths: The Allies, Federal republic of germany, and the Versailles Treaty, 1918–1921". The Periodical of Mod History. 85 (three): 632–659. doi:x.1086/670825. JSTOR 10.1086/670825. S2CID 154166326.
• Mitcham, Samuel W., Jr. (1996). Why Hitler? The Genesis of the Nazi Reich. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. ISBN0-275-95485-four.
• Reinert, Erik Due south. & Jomo, Kwame Sundaram (2008), "The Marshall Plan at 60: The Full general's Successful State of war On Poverty", Un Chronicle, archived from the original on fourteen Apr 2008
• Rose, Gideon (2010). How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Final Boxing . New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-1-4165-9053-8.
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• Skidelsky, Robert (2002). John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937–1946. Penguin.
• Stevenson, David (2004). Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy. New York: Basic Books. ISBN0-465-08185-ane.
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External links [edit]

• The Economic Consequences of the Peace at Project Gutenberg
• The Economic Consequences of the Peace public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Modern History Sourcebook on the Economic Consequences of the Peace
• Review of Economic Consequences of the Peace in Political Science Quarterly 35 by Thorstein Veblen
• Dr Julián Casanova, The Treaty of Versailles and its Consequences
• Walter Russell Mead, Review of John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom 1937–1946 Foreign Diplomacy 2002
• The Economic Consequences of the Peace: 100 Years Later at the Mises Constitute
• Review of R.F. Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes, 1951 past Ludwig von Mises
• The New York Times review of John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom 1937–1946

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace

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