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Notes 1 War Reparations and Hyperinflation in Germany 1 . Fisk, Harvey E.: The Inter-Ally Debts. An Analysis of War and Post-War Public Finance 1914–1923, Bankers Trust Company, 1924. See tables XXIV and XXVI. Similar figures are given by Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace , Harcourt Brace and Howe, New York, 1920, pp 261–262, 271 (first edition: Macmillan, 1919) 2 . All figures in different currencies are turned into US dollars at pre-war par of exchange. They ‘reflect the face of books as published by the finance depart- ments of several countries, without adjustment of any kind’ (Fisk, The Inter-Ally Debts , p 319) 3 . Fisk, p 17 4 . Fisk, p 6 5 . Ahamed, Liaquat: Lords of Finance , W. Heinemann, 2009, p 107 6 . Ritschl, Albrecht: The Pity of Peace: Germany’s economy at war, 1914–1918 and beyond, in Broadberry, Stephen, Harrison, Mark (eds): The Economics of World War I, Cambridge, 2005, p 66 7 . At the outbreak of the First World War, the content of the gold mark was 358.4 milligrams of fine gold. The consequent parity rates of the German mark were: 4.2 marks per American dollar, 1.2 Italian lire per mark, same for the French franc, 20.4 marks per British pound. See Pick, Franz and Sédillot, René: All the Monies of the World, Pick Publishing, 1971 8 . The accounting of occupation costs is one of the most opaque items in war repa- ration payments 9 . Bonn, Moritz J.: The Reparation Problem, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 104, November 1922, p 150 10 . Bonn, The Reparation Problem, pp 150–151 (while the amount of 20bn would be, approximately, what Germany paid during the whole history of war repara- tions). It was observed by Frank Graham (in Exchange, Price and Production in Hyperinflation: Germany, 1920–1923 , Russell & Russell, 1967, p 31 [first edition 1930]) that those payments in kind were declared to be even inadequate to meet the cost of the armies of occupation, and that, consequently, the Germans were held to have failed to pay any reparations at all. According to Sally Marks, these 8bn were ‘consumed by prior charges, notably occupation costs and the expense of provisioning Germany’. See Marks, Sally: The Myths of Reparations, in Central European History , vol. 11, n 3, 1978, p 233. But it seems that the amount of around 2.6bn was subtracted from the total of war reparation debt: see Table 1.1 11 . France 52 per cent, Britain and British Empire 22 per cent, Italy 9.3 per cent, Belgium 8 per cent, Yugoslavia 5.9 per cent, and 3 per cent for the rest. See Steiner, Zara: The Lights That Failed. European International History 1919–1933 , Oxford University Press, 2005, p 194 12 . Commission des Réparations: Rapport sur les Travaux de la Commission, de 1920 à 1922 , Félix Alcan, 1923, tome I 215 216 Notes 13 . Eichengreen, Barry: Golden Fetters. The Gold Standard and the Great Depression 1919–1939 , Oxford University Press, 1992, p 129 14 . In Poland, Saar, Danzig, and other locations 15 . Reparation Commission: Official Documents, Relative to the amount of Payments to Be Effected by Germany Under Reparations Account , HMSO, 1922, vol. I, pp 4–5 16 . Eichengreen, Golden Fetters , p 131 17 . Reparation Commission, Official Documents, Relative to the Amount of Payments , vol. I, p 5 18 . Ritschl, The Pity of Peace, p 70. 19 . It is, in fact, unclear which function each category of bonds would serve. According to Steiner and Marks, the A bonds represented the unpaid share of the 20bn gold mark interim payment (Steiner, p 197; Marks, p 237), but it should be remembered that, according to the Reparation Commission, only 2.6bn had been paid (see above). The B bonds were generally considered to be indi- rect compensation for the inter-Allied debt owed by the European Allies to the United States, but – according to another interpretation – they represented the Allies’ war damages themselves (Ritschl, The Pity of Peace, pp 69–70; Gomes, Leonard: German Reparations 1919–1922. A Historical Survey , Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p 66).. The C bonds, according to Gomes, would provide for Allied war debt cancellation (rather than the B bonds). Another author notes that these C bonds could in fact be traded, for a reduction of French debt to the United States and United Kingdom, in a sort of credit transfer. See Rupieper, Herman J.: The Cuno Government and Reparations 1922–1923. Politics and Economics , Martins Nijhoff, 1979, pp 7–8 20 . Webb, Steven B.: Hyperinflation and Stabilization in Weimar Germany, Oxford University Press, 1989, p 105 21 . Bonn, The Reparation Problem, pp 152–153 22 . Reparation Commission: Official Documents, Relative to the Amount of Payments , vol. I, pp 6–13 23 . See Bresciani-Turroni, Costantino: The Economics of Inflation. A Study of Currency Depreciation in Post-war Germany 1914–1923 , Allen & Unwin, 1937, p 95. (The book is an expanded version of Le vicende del marco tedesco , Università Bocconi, 1931) 24 . Ferguson, Niall: The Pity of War , Allen Lane, 1998, p 413 25 . Among deliveries in kind, the most important to the Allies (and the most burdensome to Germans) were coal deliveries. The Allies were demanding about 1/5 of the German coal output, which was the main energy source (Webb, Hyperinflation , p 105) 26 . Marks, pp 237–238 27 . Wiesbaden Agreement, in Reparation Commission: Agreements Concerning Deliveries in Kind to be made by Germany under the headings of Reparations , HMSO, 1922 28 . Ferguson, The Pity of War , p 415 29 . Bresciani-Turroni, The Economics of Inflation , p 54 30 . Feldman, Gerald D: The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics and Society in the German Inflation 1914–1924 , Oxford, 1993, p 5 31 . Bonn, p 155 32 . Rupieper, The Cuno Government , p 11; Steiner, The Lights , p 185 33 . Dr Wirth to the Reparation Commission, 14 December 1921, in Reparation Commission, Official Documents , vol I, p 50 Notes 217 34 . Memorandum by the French delegation on Germany’s request for a moratorium, in Reparation Commission, Official Documents, Second Part, HMSO, 1923 35 . Reparation Commission to the German government, 21 March 1922, in Official Documents , vol I, pp 118–121 36 . Reparation Commission, Official Documents , vol I, pp 121–124 37 . Rupieper, pp 256–257 38 . Steiner, pp 188–189 39 . Hetzel, Robert L.: German Monetary History in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, in Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Quarterly , 88/1, 2002, p 5 40 . Rupieper, p 11 41 . Reparation Commission: Statement of Germany’s Obligations , IV, HMSO, 1923, p 22 42 . Hetzel, p 8 43 . Ahamed, Lords of Finance , p 120 44 . Rupieper, The Cuno Government , 258–260; Marks, The Myths, p 243 45 . Keynes, The Economic Consequences , pp 261–262 46 . Keynes: Manchester Guardian , 26 August 1922, in The End of Reparations (Collected Writings, vol. 18, Royal Economic Society, 1978), p 27 47 . Keynes, Manchester Guardian , 28 September 1922, in The End of Reparations , p 34 48 . Keynes, The Economic Consequences , p 27 49 . Haller, Heinz: Die Rolle der Staatsfinanzen für den Inflationsprozess, in Deutsche Bundesbank (ed.): Währung und Wirtschaft in Deutschland 1876–1975 , Knapp, 1976, p 150 50 . Hetzel, German Monetary History, p 7 51 . Ahamed, Lords of Finance , p 121 52 . Keynes: Manchester Guardian , 28 August 1922, in The End of Reparations, pp 28–29 53 . Eichengreen, Barry, Hatton, T. J.: Interwar Unemployment in International Perspective , Kluwer Academic, 1988, p 6 54 . Bresciani-Turroni, The Economics of Inflation , pp 188–189 55 . Steiner, The Lights , p 190 56 . Keynes, Manchester Guardian , 22 December 1922, in The End of Reparations , p 89 57 . Keynes, Manchester Guardian , 28 September 1922, in The End of Reparations , p 48 58 . Quoted by Pfleiderer. See Pfleiderer, Otto O.: Die Reichsbank in der Zeit der Großen Inflation, die Stabilisierung der Mark und die Aufwertung von Kapitalforderungen, in Deutsche Bundesbank (ed.): Währung und Wirtschaft in Deutschland 1876–1975 , Knapp, 1976, p 189 59 . Bonn, The Reparation Problem , pp 153 and 156 60 . Webb, Hyperinflation, p 112 61 . Ferguson, The Pity of War , pp 407–411 62 . Marks, The Myths, pp 238–239 63 . Von Specht, Agnete: Politische und wirtschaftliche Hintergründe der deutschen Inflation, 1918 – 1923 , Lang, 1982 64 . Mitchell, p 821 65 . It is unclear whether these can be identified with NNP 66 . Bresciani-Turroni, The Economics of Inflation , p 183 67 . Depending on different estimates 68 . Webb, Hyperinflation , p 76 69 . This amount of around 9bn for three years may be inferred from Reparation Commission, Official Documents , vol I, pp 12–13 70 . This item is unclear: according to Marks, ‘there developed a certain tacit recogni- tion of [the occupation costs and other items] as reparations’ (p 233) 218 Notes 71 . Webb, Hyperinflation, p 108 72 . Webb, Hyperinflation , p 108 73 . Reparation Commission, Statement of Germany’s Obligations , p 25. Bresciani- Turroni, without quoting the source, gives a different figure: specifically, 10,027.4m. See The Economics of Inflation , ‘Debt Passed by the Reparation Commission in respect to transactions outside the Dawes Plan’, p 457. The figure is subdivided into (bn): cash 1.9, deliveries in kind 3.4, Reparation Recovery Act 0.4, property transfers 2.6, requisitions and payments of occupation armies 0.7, receipts from the Ruhr 1.0 74 . Bresciani - Turroni, The Economics of Inflation , quoted above 75 . Bresciani-Turroni quotes Helfferich, the German Finance minister, as the main exponent of this view, p 44 76 . Bresciani-Turroni, p 39 77 . Haller, Die Rolle, pp 137–142 78 . See also Ritschl, The Pity of Peace, pp 59–63 79 .
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