Having taken care of small children, I can understand the Weimar Government's issues. As far as ending the war goes, it's all good, in my opinion. I mean, yeah. We could have taken this all the way. It's understandable that the neighbors are ripping apart the November Criminals (BN), but it's better than the alternative. We've already seen two point four million deaths (BN). There is no reason to add to that. Our nationalism, at this point, is clouding the bigger picture. And anyway, they'd only been in power a few days (BN)! I don't see any mothers expecting their children to come out of the womb break dancing. How can we expect this baby government to understand how important this war is to our country?
Plus, can we all please be quiet about the land cost and reparations? We signed a war guilt clause (BN). This happens when you cannonball into a world war. Otherwise, the other countries would have invaded, and it seems as though this would hurt a bit more than our country's pride (BN). We need to take our victories where we can, rather than moaning about all the lost land (BN). However, the money we have to make up is terrifying. And, the way they went about that is where I start to gain a bit of anger.
For the most part, they've done an okay job. The government has noted that people were dying. TOO many people. So, we're out of that. They've understood the possibility of invasion, and signed both the Treaty of Versailles and the War Guilt Clause attached (BN) to relieve us of that pressure. Even allowing the other countries to take the land would be all right, except now we've lost a lot of our best land. Forty-eight percent of our iron production is gone(BN). Ditto to sixteen percent of the coal production (BN). (I did the math in my head, in case you were wondering. Don't worry, it's right.) This isn't really the fault of the government; this is just what the other countries chose to take. Can we honestly blame them for grabbing some of the prime real estate?
Since this is the case, our economy will fall down the toilet as it is. But then, the government had the ingenious idea of printing more money to pay off reparations (BN). The only problem is, more money will bring the value of our currency down (BN).
Guess how much my bread cost?
I don't know either. I couldn't buy any.
But hey, who knew? It seemed like a pretty logical idea, ignoring the gold standard, which is basically a measure of how much currency it takes to buy an ounce of gold (BN). It wasn't a smart move, and I'm pretty sure they understand that, NOW. It doesn't make things better, but young governments are prone to mistakes. It's how we react from here that will either make or break the Weimar system. We'll see.
But, just for the record. If a person has a choice between poking your left eye or poking your right eye--no third choice--it only seems logical that, no matter what, one of the two eyes is going to hurt.
Just saying.
*BN = Belk Notes
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You say that the government is young and is prone to make mistakes. This is understandable if they are small! Printing off large amounts of money is huge! Peopl everywhere cannot afford to buy anything, yes they may know that now but how can that be fixed? It will not be an easy task by any means. Yes they had hard choices to make and inevitably the same outcome would have happened but putting up a little fight would have made much more people including myself supporting them now.
ReplyDeleteAs a german citizen, how can agree to all that is happening right now? Our profitable land is being taken, our food is now too expensive to buy, and I find my self unable to support my family anymore. The economic depression is affecting the way i live my life and my feelings toward mty own country. If Germany's own people do not feel nationalistic then by signing the Treaty of Versailles,Germany lost the faith of their own Germans. I understand that this was a very difficult decision to make, but it is certain that a country should never give up changing their stance in tight situations. By doing this we have proven to the world the that we, Germany, is weak. Which is should not be an option at all.
ReplyDeleteDhara, I have to say, losing 13 percent of the land is much better than losing all of it when the Allies would have invaded us. I will admit, however, that they could have handled the printing of money much better.
ReplyDeleteKatie, seeing as the choices we had would have been much worse had we continued the war (invasion, and who knows what other damages and costs we would have to pay had we not pulled out when we did) I think it's like losing a good eye versus losing an infected eye that might be useless.
Katie, my German friend,
ReplyDeleteI really like many of the points you bring up. It got me to thinking: obviously, we must have wanted this Weimar Republic, because if we had wanted to continue what we were doing, we wouldn't have pressured Kaiser Wilhelm out of power. Isn't he the one that got us into a war we couldn't seem to win? So I think this is actually what we Germans wanted, even if we don't realize it. Kaiser Wilhelm told our boys that they'd be home before the leaves fell, yet they were still fighting 5 years. Obviously, our previous government, which had had years of experience and had already fought in wars, didn't know how to handle this situation. Therefore, the Weimar Republic had to step in and do the only thing left to do: get us out. They knew that if the former government couldn't win, they wouldn't have the know-how to, either. So they did the thing that the Kaiser wasn't smart enough to do: pull us out before we wasted more money and blood.
So yes, I agree that the new government is young and inexperienced, and therefore cannot be expected to be infallible in its decision-making. But I also think it has already been very smart for its age.