Is there any data on the sizes of economies in the late 19th century to look at? While I am not a fan of Paul Johnson at all he made an interesting remark about why Britain was economically surpassed by Germany in after having been surpassed by the US over a decade earlier, which also relates to why Imperial Germany would eventually meet its doom.
He wrote that in Britain the brightest minds became political leaders while only mediocrities became business leaders, while in Germany the brightest minds became business leaders while only mediocrities became political leaders. Last edited by erasure; at AM.. One alos has to remmber that one of the worse seetlements of WWI was that Britain and france insisted on germany payig their soldiers pension cost.
But then we see that even goig back to the US civil war where the South was also made to pay such cost in the peace. If you look at the cost verus paymjents the US did not collect nearly the outlay of either war really;especailly WWII.
Eben Churchill has a slanted view of events based on his personaol bias has always really in leaders. Felix C. Last edited by Felix C; at AM.. Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum.
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Quote: Originally Posted by Grandstander I think that the economic change took place sooner. Location: t' grim north posts, read 1,, times Reputation: Quote: Originally Posted by Yorkie Bar An interesting point - what is the definition of a superpower? Location: Earth 17, posts, read 26,, times Reputation: Location: Miami, FL 8, posts, read 8,, times Reputation: Cut off from world trade, Germany hunkered into a defensive siege, concentrating its attacks on weak enemies like Romania.
The Western allies, and especially Britain, outfitted their forces by placing larger and larger war orders with the United States. In , Britain bought more than a quarter of the engines for its new air fleet, more than half of its shell casings, more than two-thirds of its grain, and nearly all of its oil from foreign suppliers, with the United States heading the list. Britain and France paid for these purchases by floating larger and larger bond issues to American buyers—denominated in dollars, not pounds or francs.
That staggering quantity of Allied purchases called forth something like a war mobilization in the United States. American factories switched from civilian to military production; American farmers planted food and fiber to feed and clothe the combatants of Europe.
Quite the contrary: President Wilson wished to stay out of the war entirely. His Wilson is no dreamy idealist. They wanted a navy, an army, a central bank, and all the other instrumentalities of power possessed by Britain, France, and Germany.
They doubted the League because they feared it would encroach on American sovereignty. It was Wilson who wished to remain aloof from the Entente, who feared that too close an association with Britain and France would limit American options. Wilson hoped to deploy this emerging super-power to enforce an enduring peace. His own mistakes and those of his successors doomed the project, setting in motion the disastrous events that would lead to the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and a second and even more awful world war.
What went wrong? But what was no less obvious was that only the US could anchor such a new order. Periodically, attempts have been made to rehabilitate the American leaders of the s.
He believes in thrift, balanced budgets, and the gold standard; he abhors government debt and Keynesian economics. The Forgotten Depression is a polemic embedded within a narrative, an argument against the Obama stimulus joined to an account of the depression of As Grant correctly observes, that depression was one of the sharpest and most painful in American history. Total industrial production may have dropped by 30 percent. Overall, prices plummeted at the steepest rate ever recorded—steeper than in Then, after 18 months of extremely hard times, the economy lurched into recovery.
By , the U. Grant presents this story as a laissez-faire triumph. Wartime inflation was halted. Borrowing and spending gave way to saving and investing. Recovery then occurred naturally, without any need for government stimulus. They channel investment, saving and work. High prices encourage production but discourage consumption; low prices do the opposite. The depression of was marked by plunging prices, the malignity we call deflation. But prices and wages fell only so far.
They stopped falling when they become low enough to entice consumers into shopping, investors into committing capital and employers into hiring. Through the agency of falling prices and wages, the American economy righted itself. Grant tells the story with more verve and wit than most, and with a better eye for incident and character.
After World War II, Europe recovered largely as a result of American aid; the nation that had suffered least from the war contributed most to reconstruction. But after World War I, the money flowed the other way. Take the case of France, which suffered more in material terms than any World War I belligerent except Belgium.
Millions of men in their prime were dead or crippled. On top of everything, the country was deeply in debt, owing billions to the United States and billions more to Britain. France had been a lender during the conflict too, but most of its credits had been extended to Russia, which repudiated all its foreign debts after the Revolution of The French solution was to exact reparations from Germany. Britain was willing to relax its demands on France. But it owed the United States even more than France did.
Unless it collected from France—and from Italy and all the other smaller combatants as well—it could not hope to pay its American debts. Americans, meanwhile, were preoccupied with the problem of German recovery. How could Germany achieve political stability if it had to pay so much to France and Belgium?
The Americans pressed the French to relent when it came to Germany, but insisted that their own claims be paid in full by both France and Britain. The depression of killed those export hopes. Most immediately, the economic crisis sliced American consumer demand precisely when Europe needed it most. True, World War I was not nearly as positive an experience for working Americans as World War II would be; between and , for example, wages lagged behind prices. Still, millions of Americans had bought billions of dollars of small-denomination Liberty bonds.
They had accumulated savings that could have been spent on imported products. Instead, many used their savings for food, rent, and mortgage interest during the hard times of But the gravest harm done by the depression to postwar recovery lasted long past To appreciate that, you have to understand the reasons why U.
Grant rightly points out that wars are usually followed by economic downturns. Such a downturn occurred in late early Even this understates the shock, because it counts only Army contracts, not Navy ones. The postwar recession checked wartime inflation, and by March , the U. Monetary authorities, worried that inflation would revive and accelerate, made the fateful decision to slam the credit brakes, hard.
Unlike the recession, that of was deliberately engineered. There was nothing invisible about it. But was an inflation-stopper with a difference. In , monetary authorities actually sought to drive prices back to their pre-war levels. They did not wholly succeed, but they succeeded well enough.
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