TY - JOUR
AU - Hamlin,, David
AB - Abstract German war aims in 1918 were shaped in part by a consensus among German policy-makers, but also in part by competing visions of national security. The growing conviction that economic production and access to raw materials shaped German perceptions of security. For some, this meant control over an extensive network of production facilities in Eastern Europe. For others, the viability of the Mark as a stable means of exchange took priority. The ways in which these competing visions were negotiated could result in more radical goal as in Lithuania and Courland, or might limit the extension of German influence, as in Ukraine. In particular, the financial concerns of the Reichsbank and Treasury alternately obstructed and radicalized German policy in the former Russian Empire. Both bodies feared that any substantial outlays to secure control over productive assets would endanger the stability of the Mark, but both favoured extending controls over Lithuania and Courland for the same reason. The article highlights competing forms of domination advocated by different branches of the German government and the impact intramural fights had on German expansionism. It also underlines the significance of the financial components of German expansion. In 1966 James Joll used the pages of Past & Present to wade into the controversy surrounding Fritz Fischer’s Griff nach der Weltmacht (1961).1 In a broadly supportive examination of Fischer’s work and the reasons why it had proved so controversial in Germany, Joll observed, History can be written in many ways. Some of those who have discussed Fischer’s book have quoted a dictum of the historian Hermann Oncken that ‘nuance is the soul of politics’, and have suggested that Fischer, by singling out one theme and following it throughout his long work, has oversimplified the nature and evolution of German politics in World War I. Fischer has answered this with the assertion that in certain circumstances ‘nuance’ is less important than ‘Wesen’—the essence or core of a political development. … Officials, however, seldom make plain the underlying premises on which their decisions are based, and it is only by understanding these and the framework of ideas within which they are operating and the social and other pressures to which they are subject that the true grounds for their actions can be comprehended. This, it seems to me, is the justification of Fischer’s method. By concentrating on a single theme and by following it through the enormous mass of archival material which he has used, he has contributed to our understanding not only of the actual causes and course of the 1914–18 War, but of the presuppositions, the Weltanschauung, the intellectual, social, and political limitations within which leaders of Wilhelmine Germany were working.2 In making this distinction between the proverbial hedgehog and fox, Joll asserted that Fischer’s great achievement had been to avoid the ‘noise’ of shifting programmes, competing domestic political groupings and the impact of changes in the military balance and therefore to focus on the essential commonalities, the ‘framework of ideas’ informing German war aims in the First World War. In effect, Joll saw a case for a consensus about the political purposes of the First World War, one that guided all German deliberations on the shape of the postwar world. For Joll (and Fischer), all the divides between civilians and the military, between elements of the civilian administration and between political parties ultimately matter less than that basic agreement. This approach is a powerful, and in many ways effective, tool for analysing German political and economic ambitions in the First World War. Nonetheless, it comes at a cost. This way of understanding war aims encourages an oversimplified understanding of the German state and the ways in which problems were formulated and solutions proposed. If we assume instead that the German state had multiple interests and actors and multiple definitions of security and the national interest and that the process of developing policy was contested by these multiple actors, we necessarily see a much more complex vision of German war aims. German war aims were shaped by disagreements within the German state—by a lack of consensus—as well as by consensus. This observation is almost a truism of modern policymaking. The state in question here, the Kaiserreich, was notorious for its divisions. Best known was the deep gulf between civilian and military bodies. The constitution had been deliberately constructed to shield the army from civilian oversight, but focusing on that divide oversimplifies, as factions among civilian agencies also shaped policy. The relationship between imperial and Prussian bureaucracies, the prerogatives of the imperial crown and the absence of a coordinating body such as a cabinet, to name a few factors, tended to complicate policy coordination.3 During the First World War this organizational confusion came to shape foreign policy, as bodies ranging from the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, army high command) to the Prussian Ministry of Public Works were regularly consulted on policy. Rather than suggesting that the German state was unified by an expansionary vision or that a radicalized military dragged more moderate civilian policymakers forwards, this article will suggest that the different sections of the German state pursued subtly different visions of national security. The result of these alternative visions was sometimes an accumulating radicalization, as increasingly aggressive policies from different parts of the bureaucracy were laid atop one another, and sometimes a check on radicalization, as one part of the German state would block such pressures from elsewhere in the state. To examine the ways in which the polycentric nature of the German state could alternately moderate or radicalize policy, we will explore the role of the Reichsbank (central bank) and, to a lesser extent, the Treasury in shaping German policy on the former Russian Empire in 1918. As a primary institution guiding German monetary and financial policy, the Reichsbank was an essential component of the war effort. It also was a central institution for consideration of how the German economy would adapt to the postwar international economy; that is to say it played a role in the development of German economic war aims. The role of the Reichsbank in the war effort and its long-established assumptions about monetary policy tended to shape how it understood Germany’s needs after the war. The Reichsbank was, admittedly, a distinctly non-traditional actor in the formulation of German foreign policy, and historians have frequently hurried past the records of the Reichsbank on their way to explore the meeting minutes and letters stashed in the files of the Foreign Office and the Chancellery. By reincorporating the Reichsbank into the story of German war aims, we get a fuller sense of how German policy was developed and the concerns that influenced those aims. In the process, this article complicates both Fischer’s arguments about continuities between German aims from 1914 to 1918 and assumptions associated with Isabel Hull about the military’s singular role in radicalizing German policy.4 By opening up the process of developing war aims, we can detect different trajectories in German policy-making. The financial concerns of the Reichsbank and the Treasury not only shaped German policy towards the former Russian lands but also anticipated the fraught politics of debt and currency that plagued European politics from the 1920s to the beginnings of the European Economic Community. The Reichsbank’s effort to grapple with the financial consequences of the war shaped its specific interventions in deliberations over German war aims and suggests multiple legacies from the German war aims of 1918. Finally, the questions which animated the Reichsbank and the Treasury in 1918 were intimately tied to the course of the war itself. The structure of the German state exacerbated problems in coordination, particularly at the level of military and foreign policies. To shield the military from civilian oversight, the army and the navy were directly subordinate to the Kaiser, such that General von Schlieffen famously did not understand what his counterparts in the navy did and Chancellor von Bülow was largely ignorant of Schlieffen’s plans in the event of war.5 The institutional structures with which the German state went to war tended to encourage misunderstanding. This structural tendency was reinforced by regulatory capture in the civilian administration, as elements of the state came to reflect the interests of the sector of the economy which they regulated. The Treasury and the Reichsbank, for example, became closely linked with the financial industry (major banks were even shareholders in the Reichsbank). The Interior (and later the Economics Office) became closely associated with industry, especially heavy industry. Agricultural interests had their own Prussian ministry. A programme for the postwar world grew out of this polycentric governing structure. Besides the multiple major negotiations at Kreuznach and Bad Homburg involving the principal civilian and military figures, there were innumerable meetings at the level of state secretaries or under state secretaries. These regular discussions held in preparation for the various peace agreements and even subsequently were efforts to coordinate the narrower demands of state bureaucracies and their associated interest groups such that a common foreign policy might be possible. This process was expected to be sufficiently fraught that Karl Helfferich, the former banker and recently dismissed deputy chancellor, was appointed to coordinate the economic dimensions of the eastern peace treaties and was then suggested for a similar responsibility in the West.6 I: Ukraine One example of this multi-departmental coordination process can be seen in discussions held in the late spring and summer of 1918 about German economic policy towards Ukraine. The German Army had recently cooperated in the overthrow of the socialist Rada, replacing it with a right-wing authoritarian regime under the Hetman (commander) Skorapodsky. On the one hand, the new government appeared to be willing, at times eager, to cooperate with the Germans. The ‘possessing classes’ sought an ally in Germany’s ‘capitalist circles’ against Bolshevism.7 On the other hand, there were reports that British and American interests were intent on buying banks, mines, harbour operations and other essential elements of the Russian and Ukrainian economy. Western capital might swoop in to seize control of the economic assets of the failing Russian Empire and then effectively deny German access to them.8 This combination of opportunity and threat prompted the Economics Office’s representative in Kiev, Otto Wiedfeldt, and the German ambassador, Alphons Mumm von Schwarzenstein, to submit to Berlin a plan for a massive wave of German investment in key sectors of the Ukrainian economy. Weidfeldt is a familiar figure to historians of German war aims. Fritz Fischer hailed him as one of the ‘chief brains of the German delegation in the Ukraine’ and, with Freiherr (baron) Hans Karl von Stein, as the man who ‘laid the foundations for the economic domination’ of Ukraine, creating a relationship modelled on that of the British dominions with Great Britain.9 Wiedfeldt and Mumm emphasized that there was an opportunity to secure ‘enduring advantages for the German economy … if [certain sectors of the Ukrainian economy] could be brought under German influence’. For Wiedfeldt, Ukraine was an unusually valuable economic partner since it was not only a ‘raw materials land’ that could supply German industrial centres with food and industrial raw materials but also a consumer market for German industrial goods. Thus, he recorded, ‘Ukraine offers possibilities for the future like few others.’ To make the most of this prospect, Germany should establish its influence over transportation systems, coal, metal ores and, above all, the financial industry. Germany needed to assist the Ukrainians in building a central bank and Germany’s major banks had to play a leading role in detaching the Ukrainian financial system from that of Russia. In this area, Mumm insisted, the new government was actively seeking the participation of German capital interests. Here was, he thought, an opportunity ‘to create a sphere of interest with enormous developmental possibilities; an opportunity which history does not often offer a nation’.10 The vision sketched by Germany’s principal economic and political representatives in Ukraine was highly colonial, constructing Ukraine as a unique opportunity to expand the capital base of the German economy. The Ukrainians were willing at this historical moment to invite in and cooperate with German capital interests, providing the opening which would allow German interests to control the essential pillars of the Ukrainian economy for decades to come. This is the vision that historians such as Peter Borowsky, Fritz Fisher and Carl Remer have emphasized in their analyses of German policy. It is this vision that prompts Geoff Eley to observe that ‘the aim was “getting out of Ukraine what there is to be gotten,” binding it over the longer term to the greater German economy’. 11 The German war effort would open new possibilities for German capital expansion, an opportunity to tie new and huge markets to Germany. The reception of these proposals in Berlin highlights both the extent and the limits of the consensus among the German policy-making elite. The leadership of the Economics Office, the Treasury and the Reichsbank all endorsed the plan in principle. State Secretary von Stein of the Economics Office told a conference on 18 June 1918 that he had already begun preliminary discussions for a study of the Ukrainian economy, with an eye towards ‘where German influence in transportation, banking and ore and coal production might effectively be developed and therefore where German capital would be desirable’. The participation of German capital would require not just the participation of private banks and industry but also the resources of the Reich. In light of the demands for war finance and the risks involved in investing in Ukraine, Stein argued that the Reich should offer loan guarantees to ensure that German capital markets would produce the 2 billion marks needed to control the Ukrainian economy. Alternatively, state resources might be used. The insertion of German capital into a controlling position in Ukraine was necessary, argued Stein, to meet the future challenge of Western economic warfare.12 Peter Borowsky described this meeting in his richly detailed book Deutsche Ukrainepolitik 1918 (1970). He developed a much fuller understanding of German policy towards Ukraine and Russia in 1918 than had, for example, Winfried Baumgart by incorporating the Economics Office into his analysis, in addition to the records of the chancellor, Foreign Office and army. In his analysis, Borowsky highlighted the private nature of the German penetration of the Ukrainian economy. Moreover, he emphasized that all the civilian offices agreed to the outlines of the plan proposed by Wiedfeldt and endorsed by Stein.13 Indeed, there was apparent agreement about the desirability of incorporating Ukraine into a German economic Raum (space). State Secretary for the Treasury Siegfried Graf von Roedern and the president of the Reichsbank, Rudolf Havenstein, offered no criticism of the vision; Havenstein explicitly endorsed the ‘importance of an enduring influence in Ukraine and Russia in light of the threatened economic war’. In an earlier letter to the state secretary for foreign affairs, von Roedern had admitted that the goals of German domination of the rail, ore, coal and financial sectors in Ukraine were ‘in general desirable’. So, the political and economic aims sketched by Wiedfeldt and Mumm seemed to enjoy support among the relevant agencies in Berlin. The Treasury and the Reichsbank were, however, extremely reluctant to provide the resources necessary to realize those ambitious goals. Borowsky skated around this disagreement. The Treasury and the Reichsbank, he suggested, were simply noncommittal about providing the resources; Wiedfeldt’s grand design for securing a dominant German position in the Ukrainian economy was put on hold while the details were hashed out. This interpretation misstates the nature and scale of the objections offered by the financial authorities. All sides recognized that the bulk of the German capital market was absorbed in financing the war effort. Wiedfeldt, Mumm and Stein all alluded to this reality. Havenstein added that the various state and local governments needed to have access to capital. Crucially for the ensuing discussion, Roedern rejected the idea of state guarantees and argued that since he had legal authority to contract debt only for the purposes of the war, efforts to establish a postwar position of dominance in Ukraine would require authorization from the Reichstag. It was this argument that Wiedfeldt’s supporters chose to focus on; Secretary von Stein and the representative of the OHL protested that the economic exploitation of Ukraine was necessary for the war effort, so no new legal power was required.14 Objections were many and often technical, but Stein seemed to think they could be overcome. Indeed, Erich Ludendorff, quartermaster general of the German Army, would telegraph Stein the next day making Stein’s own argument, effectively offering the OHL’s backing to the Economics Office for its efforts to work around the objections of the Treasury.15 In reality, the opposition of the fiscal and monetary agents of the German state betokened a larger set of complicating issues. That the objections of the Treasury and the Reichsbank to using state resources also substantially undermined Wiedfeldt’s ambitious plan should give pause to Borowsky’s argument that this was a plan for an essentially private penetration of the Ukrainian economy. State resources were clearly central to the vision of the Economics Office. But most importantly, the Treasury and the Reichsbank never yielded to any of the technical counter-arguments offered by the Economics Office. Behind the technical objections were surely some weighty policy objections, the sort of objections that, as Gerald Feldman has pointed out, the Reichsbank was habitually reluctant to admit.16 To understand the stance of the Reichsbank and the Treasury, we can usefully explore how each institution understood Germany’s delicate international monetary position even after a successful conclusion of the war, what Joll referred to as the ‘framework of ideas’ within which the Reichsbank and Treasury developed policy positions. The war had devastated the financial position of the Reich, both internally and externally. The Reichsbank was particularly anxious about Germany’s international financial position after the war, in particular its ability to service debts contracted during the war that would come due with the end of the war and to afford the expected surge in imports. The Reichsbank had written to the chancellor in March 1918 that the postwar balance of payments was going to present profound difficulties. In addition to pent-up demand for imports, the Reichsbank ticked off payments for short-term loans contracted with neutrals to pay for wartime imports, payments technically already paid to occupied territories for food and raw materials but held in marks by the Reichsbank, the financial needs of Austria-Hungary and finally marks held abroad that the Reichsbank expected to be traded for foreign exchange. The Reichsbank estimated that around 19.5 billion marks would flow out of Germany, while an optimistic accounting suggested 12 billion would flow in. It estimated a deficit in the current account of ‘at least 7 ½ billion marks’, and added, ‘covering this balance is an impossible task’. Germany would have to severely reduce domestic consumption in a politically insupportable fashion; the only other solution was a very large war indemnity.17 That message was reinforced by an urgent warning from both the Treasury and the Reichsbank on 29 July. The short-term debt owed by the Reich threatened the solvency of the state. As the Treasury found that war expenses were running above the proceeds of the biannual war-bond sales, Germany increasingly turned to short-term treasury notes to finance the war.18 Much of the short-term debt was held by the Reichsbank itself, meaning its own solvency was precarious. Short-term notes held by the public were even more problematic. If creditors refused to roll over their treasury notes into new ones, whether because they had lost confidence in the government’s solvency or because they wanted to use their capital for other purposes (such as postwar reconstruction), the result would be a titanic drain of the government’s balance sheets, such that bankruptcy would be a real possibility. The combination of the 75 billion in short-term debt and the current account deficit sketched in the March report, to say nothing of the long-term obligations represented by German war bonds, threatened to overwhelm the state. External sources of finance such as the financial markets of the United States and Great Britain could not be relied upon even in peace time, because it was assumed that they would look after their allies first. For the state to overcome the looming financial crisis, the Treasury and Reichsbank argued, it would need a war indemnity from the western states, a balanced budget (inclusive of debt payments) such that it did not need to borrow money for five to ten years, tax receipts in money and not war bonds (because the Treasury needed cash to service immediate debts more than it needed debt relief which would be highly beneficial in ten years or more), resources from defeated enemies (meaning Russia and Romania) and no new billion mark loans. The Reichsbank and Treasury further expected German banks would be challenged to find the resources required of them after the war. They added, perhaps with Ukraine in mind, that Germany’s allies and the Randstaaten (referring to those states recently created from the Russian Empire) had to be kept out of the German capital markets since these were ‘entirely insufficient even for domestic purposes’.19 Absent a huge infusion of outside capital, which the Reichsbank could imagine only in the form of an extremely large war indemnity paid by their defeated western enemies, Germany was going to be in deep financial distress after the war. The Reichsbank and the Treasury defined their expected policy response in conventional terms. The German state had to seek a fiscal balance which would provoke a substantial domestic deflation, which they hoped would allow the German state to service its domestic debt. At the same time, Germany had to seek a substantial increase in exports to earn the receipts to service debt denominated in foreign currency and stabilize its current account. They hoped that declining domestic prices might aid that export boom. These prescriptions were followed by Great Britain before and after the war and mapped, on a grander scale, the thoughts Karl Helfferich had offered before the war.20 Presumably with these calculations in mind, German banks likewise remained extremely reluctant to risk their own capital in Ukraine. Capital was likely to be hard to find after the war, which would greatly stress their own balance sheets. Lending it out to a fragile Ukraine must have seemed deeply problematic. As a consequence, the banks insisted on the participation of the Reich in any investments in Ukrainian projects, as a means of guaranteeing their own capital. Even the threat of Austrian-Hungarian competition failed to generate more than an unofficial fact-finding tour by one of the Berlin banks.21 This conventional attitude toward monetary and fiscal policy strongly militated against any grand plans for seizing a leading position in Ukraine. The Reichsbank and Treasury, guardians of the fiscal stability of the state and the value of the mark, saw the plans of Wiedfeldt and Mumm as attractive visions so long as they remained visions; the fiscal demands required for their realization were viewed as far too dangerous. While a conventional approach to monetary and fiscal policy was entirely unsurprising, it was not inevitable. The German state for some time had been living beyond its means. The Reichsbank and Treasury had indulged in an unconventional policy centred around an expanding money supply and the discounting of war bonds and treasury notes. Both could be discounted by the Reichsbank, providing ready cash that could then be used to buy more war bonds.22 The policy of continuous discounting and monetary expansion was essentially what the Economics Office and the army had been arguing for. If the Reichsbank and the Treasury had seen the Ukrainian venture as essential, the infrastructure would have been available to find the necessary money. The war effort, however, was worth an extended flirtation with heterodox financial ideas; Ukraine was not. Ultimately, after both the Reich and the major banks refused to provide resources, prominent industrialist Hugo Stinnes agreed to organize a syndicate of major industrial firms, including Krupp, MAN, AUG, Siemens, Hamburg-Amerika and himself to invest in Ukraine. The syndicate was expected to put up a total of 20 million marks, a far cry from the 2 billion contemplated earlier in the summer.23 We can understand why the Reichsbank and Treasury might have sounded as if they agreed with the Economics Office and Foreign Office and yet have come to different conclusions about the implications for Ukraine. All sides concurred that postwar markets would likely remain politicized. They all held that the western allies would likely discriminate against Germany in a variety of ways, bundled under the title ‘economic war’. For the Economics Office, and for its allies in industry and the army, this ‘economic war’ was largely understood as a question of withholding raw materials and discriminating against German export products. Against that backdrop, using vast public resources to control the producers of raw materials in Ukraine and possibly, by extension, in Russia too was a logical, almost necessary, step. Coached by Ukrainian nationalists to see Ukraine as the bread basket of the Russian Empire, these Germans saw Ukrainian resources as the solution to urgent problems.24 By contrast, the Reichsbank, Treasury and their allies in the banking industry saw the principal problem in the flow of money. The crushing current account deficit and domestic debt in conjunction with the expected exclusion from the leading western financial centres, possible discrimination against German exports and the resulting limitations of foreign exchange earnings all threatened the ability of German currency to serve as an efficient medium of exchange, and hence the ability of Germans to access external markets. To the financial authorities, all these factors required a concerted effort to limit German external obligations. The apparent consensus on the contours of German policy in Ukraine did not extend to agreement about relative priorities, obstructing policy agreement and implementation. When we introduce new actors and emphasize the importance of financial considerations, the significance of the disputes, the apparent ‘confusion’ rather than the ‘Wesen’, to borrow Joll’s terms, comes into focus. The ways in which German financial interests understood the dangers of the postwar world differed in small but important ways from the ways in which German industrial interests understood the dangers of the postwar world. That disagreement obstructed German imperialism in Ukraine in 1918. The divisions bedevilling German policy on Ukraine did not fall neatly along civilian–military lines. A common refrain in the literature on German war aims notes a split between reasonable civilians and unreasonable military. This distinction informs the depiction provided in his postwar memoirs by Ottokar Czernin of his negotiations with the Germans during the war as Austrian-Hungarian foreign minister. It is a staple of Fischer’s critics, most notably Gerhard Ritter and Winfried Baumgart,25 who treat foreign policy as the outcome of a contested process of deliberation involving the Foreign Office, chancellor and military, particularly the OHL. Thomas Nipperdey suggests a deep split between the army and right-wing activist groups on one side and the chancellor, Foreign Office and Reichstag majority parties on the other.26 More recently, a similar distinction structures Adam Tooze’s discussion of German policy in 1918.27 Tooze and Nipperdey both expand the realm of the civilians to encompass the Reichstag majority parties, but civilians in government are cast as a bloc, one defined by its contest with the expansionary impulses of the army. Peter Borowsky saw that same split; emphasizing the ‘diametric opposition’ between the policies of the OHL and the civilians. When the civilians sound an aggressive note, Borowsky suggested that this reflected the domestic political power of the army, which forced the ‘moderate ideas of the Foreign Office’ to adapt to the goals of the OHL.28 The power of this assumption can be seen in the way that Borowsky deals with Ludendorff’s telegram of 19 June 1918 to the state secretary for the Economics Office, von Stein. For Borowsky, this telegram, in which Ludendorff asserted that large-scale investment in Ukraine was necessary for the war effort, was an effort to force the civilian authorities to crudely and immediately plunder the Ukrainian economy for the German war effort.29 In fact, Ludendorff was picking up and echoing von Stein’s own argument from the day before. The Treasury had asserted that it would need authorization from the Reichstag for any debt contracted for investment in Ukraine since such a transaction would not be a war expense, evidently an effort to use the Reichstag to draw out and perhaps kill off any such debt operation. Von Stein responded by asserting that the debt should be seen as a war expense in light of the continuing combat operation in the East. The telegram sent by Ludendorff the following day was intended not to pressure von Stein into something but to support him against a common bureaucratic opponent, the Treasury. The policy initiative was from a civilian agency. The divide in German policy-making here was not between civilians and the military but rather between those who saw the German economy in monetary terms and those who saw it in productivist terms. Different understandings of the economy in turn authorized different visions of security. Alexander Watson has ably tracked the evolution of German ideas of security, particularly those of Ludendorff. He observes that Ludendorff ‘understood after three years of total war that “corn and potatoes are power, just like coal and iron”’, and comments, ‘The “turnip winter” of 1916–17 had revealed that the Reich’s own farmland was insufficient to feed its population. Ludendorff’s answer to this problem was to seize an eastern empire.’30 State Secretary von Stein of the Economics Office shared a similar belief, holding that western policy made German access to global markets problematic; he could therefore state that ‘it is a matter of life and death for us whether we secure Russia as a source of raw materials and as an export market’.31 Both Ludendorff and von Stein emphasized the strategic significance of sources of raw materials and related that security problem to imperial ambitions in the East. The Reichsbank, by contrast, questioned whether markets in eastern Europe were even accessible in the absence of a functioning financial and monetary system. Security meant protecting the currency such that it was an effective tool for acquiring the raw materials that Ludendorff and Stein demanded. That contest over how to properly understand Germany’s economy and its interests effectively obstructed one of the more grandiose visions of German empire in the former Russian Empire. II: The Baltics The significance of the divides over Ukraine are thrown into relief by the Reichsbank’s very different policy ambitions with regard to the Baltics. Reichsbank interventions on German policy towards Lithuania and Courland roughly aligned with broader German policy and therefore drew less attention from contemporaries than did its conflicts with the Economics Office and the army over policy towards Ukraine. Reichsbank intervention in Baltic policy, much as for Ukraine, was driven by its particular concerns. As we shall see, the interests of the Reichsbank, which had obstructed imperial expansion in Ukraine, tended to intensify imperial ambitions in the Baltic region. Discussions between the army and the chancellor and other civilian representatives about the future of Lithuania and Courland in 1917 had emphasized the need to ensure that they would be ‘closely attached to Germany’. The precise form of that bond was left open for some time. Military, diplomatic and dynastic links were considered. Freiherr von Gayl of Ober Ost the occupation authority in Lithuania, sketched the proposed relationship in November 1917 with a vague prescription: the new Baltic states would ‘remain foreign to Germany under international law, but be closely tied to the German Empire through state treaties (particularly in terms of diplomatic representation, army and navy, customs union, like Luxemburg)’.32 By December, Karl Helfferich, who had been tasked with organizing the economic elements of the eastern peace treaties, von Stein and prominent parliamentary and financial figures agreed that the new eastern states should assume responsibility for payment of part of the rapidly accumulating German debts.33 The move to have the Baltic states assume a portion of German state debts was testimony to the growing anxiety about Germany’s postwar fiscal position. As for Ukraine, a consensus vision, emphasizing a semi-independent status, can be recognized also for Lithuania and Courland. The Reichsbank inserted itself into discussions of the Baltics in April 1918. It sent a memorandum to von Stein on 16 April making the case that ‘the expected economic incorporation of Courland and Lithuania into the German Empire requires as a precondition the entry of both states into the German currency zone’. Marks had to become their currency and the Reichsbank their central bank, which would require the new Baltic states to adopt German banking legislation and give up the right to issue their own paper money. The basic infrastructure of the modern Baltic economy would be German. The Reichsbank recognized the significant intervention in the country’s autonomy and suggested Lithuania and Courland be permitted to appoint two representatives with full voting rights to the Bundesrat.34 Despite initial anxieties at the Interior Office about the domestic political implications of having Baltic representatives in the Bundesrat, the Reichsbank proposals were swiftly incorporated into German plans and put into suggested treaty language.35 The speed with which the Reichsbank suggestions were folded into German policy reflected their similar intended outcomes. The Reichsbank’s desire to incorporate the Baltics into the mark zone would result in a tighter union between Germany, on one side, and Lithuania and Courland, on the other, a more robust version of the original vision of quasi-independence sketched in 1917. Germany and the new Baltic states would be using the same currency (the Germans provided details of how Lithuania and Courland would be permitted to design the physical appearance of their money). Beyond the symbolism of a shared currency, a currency union backed by common banking laws would create a financial market that was expected to be dominated by German banks. The Reichsbank also anticipated the development of common interest rates.36 Its proposal implied even greater dependence of the new Baltic ‘states’ on Germany, to whom they would have to turn over essential elements of their sovereignty, crucial tools in shaping their economic lives. The Reichsbank’s purposes in seeking a currency union were left vague. It presented the currency union as a logical necessity for any economic community and made a similar argument with regards to Belgium,37 although not in negotiations with Austria-Hungary. We might take the word of the Reichsbank at face value and assume that it believed any customs union (aside from that sought with Austria-Hungary) required a common currency if it was to operate most efficiently, even though they did not provide a clear rationale. It bears mentioning that the Zollverein, Germany’s most famous customs union before the European Economic Community, operated with multiple currencies. It seems likely that many of the pressures that prompted the Reichsbank to dismiss the possibility of generating the state funds or guarantees required to insert German capital firmly into a controlling position in Ukraine pushed the Reichsbank to advocate for a much more intrusive German position in the Baltic states. Arguably, the Reichsbank pushed for the closest links short of annexation between Germany and the Baltic states. The proposed currency union would result in an expanded zone in which Germans could buy and sell without impact on Germany’s current-account balance. Imports from Russia would require roubles, to exchange for Russian products, which meant the sale of marks. Imports from a Lithuania inside a mark currency zone would be denominated in marks. While a single currency would indeed probably bring market efficiencies, the Reichsbank’s enormous anxiety about the consequences of German indebtedness and the looming payments crisis played a substantial role in shaping Reichsbank policy. The fact that no one was seeking large German capital infusions for the Baltics certainly facilitated agreement. Rather than seeking capital expenditures that would add to the postwar stress on the mark and the German financial system, German policymakers were agreed that the Baltics should assume German debt. In effect, then, the Baltics would export capital to Germany after the war, and trade would not have implications for the external value of the mark. Under these circumstances, the Reichsbank ceased to be a brake on German policy and instead became a motor, pushing for even stronger German control over vassal states in the Baltics, to the point that the it sought representation for the Baltic states in one part of the legislative branch of the German state. III: Russia The Reichsbank’s interest in expanding the mark zone did not extend to Russia itself, for which very different financial calculations were at play. The Reichsbank was very interested in the Russian state debt held by Germans, estimated by the Reichsbank at about 1.86 billion marks, without including interest payments in arrears during the war. The Reichsbank and the German banks were keenly interested in ensuring that the Russian state began servicing that debt as soon and as regularly as possible.38 Russian debt payments were variously attractive to the German financial community. The payments would be a source of foreign currency, needed to prop up the value of the mark. They would also facilitate access to Russian supplies of raw materials and prop up the balance sheets of the major Berlin banks, with ramifications for Germany’s overextended domestic capital markets. As the Reichsbank argued to State Secretary von Stein regarding Russian debts to Germany, ‘the substantial demands that will be placed on our capital market after the war make it an inescapable duty of the government to use all its power to ensure that there is no reduction of the German capital position’.39 A number of difficulties complicated, however, the flow of roubles to German financial markets. Most notably, by the end of 1917 the money Russians owed to Germans was a tiny fraction of Russian indebtedness of approximately 56 billion roubles,40 much of which was owed to Russia’s allies in the West. Servicing this debt was very onerous, increasingly so as the rouble declined in value.41 The Reichsbank could protect Germany’s financial interests in Russia in several ways. Arthur Gwinner, director of the Deutsche Bank, suggested that the Treasury issue German debt which would be exchanged for Russian debt held by Germans—the holders of Russian debt would receive their money (and protection from a Russian bankruptcy) and the German state would gain instruments that could either provide income or be exchanged for Russian resources by trading raw materials for old Russian state bonds. The Reichsbank ultimately rejected Gwinner’s plan, in part because it did not believe there was room in the German bond market for the additional German state debt and in part because it assumed the Russians would want to export for foreign exchange, not to redeem old Russian bonds.42 That is to say, the Reichsbank felt itself constrained by both the limited domestic capital market and the presumed preferences of the Russian state, although it is difficult to overlook that Gwinner’s plan shifted the risk of Russian default entirely to the German state, which would have added to the precarious position of state finances. After dismissing Gwinner’s proposal, the Reichsbank turned to adding to the peace treaty specific protections for German creditors. In the most straightforward sense, this step was intended to protect the German financial position, but it was also a means to encourage the Russian state to default on debts to everyone else. Germany’s enemies would be damaged and Russia would be dependent on Germany as a trading partner and a source of capital postwar (it was assumed that the Russians would be excluded from western capital markets after defaulting on western loans).43 In the meantime, the Reichsbank sought to construct a payment system, as stable as possible, that would allow Russian resources to be acquired and put a minimum of pressure on the external value of the mark. The Reichsbank was reluctant to buy roubles on neutral markets and therefore, while waiting for the Russians to begin servicing German-owned debt, they suggested that Germany turn to what was by now a common instrument for facilitating trade without risking a decline in foreign exchange—blocked accounts. Germany and the Soviets would each place a given sum in an account in their own country that could be accessed by the other state to make purchases. The money could not be repatriated and would have to be used to make purchases in the home country. The Russians were protected against the declining value of the rouble and the Germans would not risk devaluing the mark further.44 In dealing with the revolutionary state in Moscow, the Reichsbank consistently sought to ensure a flow of Russian capital and Russian resources to Germany while limiting the risk for Germany’s domestic capital or the external value of the mark. The Reichsbank’s emphasis on the likely financial problems of the postwar period shaped policy in multiple directions, resulting in efforts to encourage the Russians to trade with Germany and to reduce the new Russian state to a position of financial dependency on Germany. IV: Finance and Empire German war aims in the former Russian Empire play an important role in the historiography of twentieth-century Germany. Geoff Eley has argued that German nationalists learned a new political geography as a result of the experience of briefly administering Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics. A particular vision of the resources to be drawn from Ukraine entered into the German vocabulary. Timothy Snyder succinctly argues that ‘the image of a Ukrainian cornucopia penetrated German minds at a time of blockade and hunger’. James Casteel shows how the First World War helped Germans imagine themselves as colonial agents charged with modernizing and developing a backwards Russia. Vejas Liulevicius has written persuasively of the rise of a vision of an abstract East based on Volk und Raum (race and space) from the wreckage of the First World War.45 In each case, the brief colonial adventure in 1918 created lasting intellectual structures that prepared Germans for the Nazi vision of Lebensraum (living space). This article does not challenge that way of viewing the German wartime experience. This essay does suggest that the history of the German colonial experience in western Russia was the result of substantial and cross-cutting pressures, many of which emerged during and as a result of the war. The history of the financial concerns shaping German policy, however, disappeared almost immediately. During the war, the Reichsbank had kept information about the precariousness of German finances to a rather limited circle, and after the war any acknowledgement of their instability could have suggested that reparations were not the essential financial and economic problem in German economic life. Erasing financial factors from the history of German expansion eastwards effectively cleared the field for the colonialist legend of a ‘Ukrainian cornucopia’ to flourish. Beyond rescuing the multiple concerns that influenced policymaking, the history of Germany’s 1918 adventure also belongs to the history of Europe’s complicated interwar narrative of debt, foreign exchange and international politics. Standard histories of interwar economics often take the end of the war as a starting point. ‘The First World War marked the end of an era in the history of commercial relations among countries’, argued Charles Kindleberger. ‘The interwar gold standard had its origins in the effects of the First World War on the pre-war gold standard’, wrote D. E. Moggridge. In his seminal history of the gold standard, Barry Eichengreen observed that ‘World War I unleashed forces that combined to shape international economic relations for decades’.46 The financial and commercial history of the interwar period issued from Allied victory. In 1918, however, German authorities were busily planning for German victory. German planners were just beginning to confront many of the dilemmas associated with the whole of European international economics in the twenties and thirties, into the forties and through to the creation of the European Economic Community—domestic deflation, the (often self-defeating) search for foreign exchange to prop up a stable currency and encouraging growth of trade while the international financial system remained unstable and beset with indebtedness.47 In 1918 the Reichsbank and the German Treasury were grappling with the enormous financial challenges that would result from the war. They pushed for an expanded mark zone, preferential debt treatment and blocked accounts and explored the foreign political consequences of a steep postwar deflation. They even contemplated weaponizing bankruptcy. The German experiment in quasi-colonial rule in the former Russian Empire was also a first draft of possible ways of dealing with the economic consequences of the war. Unlike the multilateral efforts of the twenties and Bretton Woods, however, these early German efforts were unilateral and ultimately aimed at simultaneously exporting the costs of the war and securing German primacy. With these factors taken together, we can see the Reichsbank preparing to stabilize the mark after the war through a steep deflation whose costs would be moderated by the construction of a sort of financial empire in the East, which would ship capital to Germany (over and above whatever trade arrangements would be made). There is little evidence of the Germans preparing for a return to prewar systems of exchange in the former Russian Empire. Outside the Baltic states which would be included in the mark zone, there was little sign of an effort to equalize price levels or create market mechanisms for dealing with payment imbalances seen before the war.48 Capital would not flow to offset imbalances, nor would interest rates in an era of steep deflation be terribly sensitive to shifts in the balance of payments. For all the innovation in specific policies, Germany’s financial elites were motivated by a well-established ‘framework of ideas’ that they had inherited from prewar policies. While this collection of ideas about the proper significance of money was not disconnected from the ideas of businessmen and military men, the emphases were clearly different. We might wonder if we are dealing here with another powerful subculture shaping German policy according to its particular ethos, much as Isabel Hull suggests for the German army in Absolute Destruction.49 Whereas the German Army and German international lawyers developed a set of assumptions and practices that distinguished them from their peers in other European states, creating a sort of narrow, institutional Sonderweg, a ‘special path’ to modernity unique to Germany, the German financial elite appear to have shared conventional policy goals. Responding to the pressures of the war, the Reichsbank developed unusual policy tools ranging from inflationary discounting to blocked accounts to financial empire, but these tools were to be used to realize goals familiar to central bankers everywhere. The peculiar mix of moderation and radicalism was a result of the conventionality of the German financial elites. The financial implications of the war played their own role in shaping German ambitions and anxieties for the postwar world. Those anxieties had to be balanced, however, against ambitions and anxieties articulated by other portions of the German state. German war aims were contested domestically and shaped by competing definitions of the national interest. At times the Reichsbank restrained German ambitions in the interests of limiting the financial strain on the German state and capital markets. In other circumstances, financial strain would push the Reichsbank to insist upon even deeper interventions in the societies of other peoples or upon the bureaucratization of exchange. Footnotes 1 Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht: die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/18 (Düsseldorf, 1961; trans. into English as Germany’s Aims in the First World War [1967]). 2 J. Joll, ‘The 1914 Debate Continues: Fritz Fischer and His Critics’, Past & Present, 34, 1 (1966), pp. 100–13. 3 T. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, 1866–1918, vol. 2: Machtstaat vor der Demokratie (Munich, 1992), pp. 85–119; C. Clark, Iron Kingdom; The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (Cambridge, MA, 2006), pp. 603–11. 4 I. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY, 2005). 5 Ibid. Christopher Clark makes a similar point in C. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914 (New York, 2014), pp. 197–200. 6 J. Williamson, Karl Helfferich 1872–1924: Economist, Financier, Politician (Princeton, 1971), pp. 252–70. See also Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (henceforth BL) R43/2449 bl. 47–57, Aufzeichnung über die Fortführung des Auftrages von Excellenz Helfferich. Forwarded to Radowitz in Reichskanzelei, 8 Aug. 1918. 7 BL R3101/1168 bl. 313, Wiedfeldt to Staatssekretär des Reichswirtschaftsamt, 7 May 1918. 8 BL R3101/1168 bl. 135, Niederschrift der Besprechung über Fragen der Wirtschaftspolitik in Gross-Russland und der Ukraine am Dienstag, den 4. Juni 1918; BL R3101/1168 bl. 136, Niederschrift der Besprechung über die zukünftige Wortschaftspolitik in der Ukraine und Gross-Russland am Freitag den 14. Juni 1918 (Fortsetzung der Besprechung von 4.VI.18). For Western interest in Russian banks, see also BL R704/52 bl. 132, Hugo Stinnes to Helfferich, 4 May 1918; BL R704/52 bl. 144, Hugo Stinnes to Helfferich, 14 May 1918. 9 F. Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (London, 1967), p. 541. 10 BL R3101/1168 bl. 313, Wiedfeldt to Staatssekretär des Reichswirtschaftsamt, 7 May 1918; BL R3101/1168 bl. 259, AA to RWA, 18 May 1918. 11 P. Borowsky, Deutsche Ukrainepolitik 1918: unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wirtschaftsfragen (Lübeck, 1970), quote from p. 17; P. Borowsky, ‘Germany’s Ukrainian Policy during World War I and the Revolution of 1918–19’, in H.-J. Torke and J.-P. Hinke (eds), German-Ukrainian Relations in Historical Perspective (Edmonton, 1994), pp. 84–94; Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War; C. Remer, Die Ukraine im Blickfeld deutscher Interessen: Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1917/18 (Frankfurt/Main, 1997); G. Eley. Nazism as Fascism; Violence, Ideology, and the Ground of Consent in Germany 1930–1945 (London and New York, 2013), p. 137. 12 BL R3101/1168 bl. 251, Niederschrift über die Chefbesprechung am 18. Juni 1918, betreffend wirtschaftliche Maßnahmen in der Ukraine. 13 Borowsky, Deutsche Ukrainepolitik, p. 169. For comparison, see W. Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918: von Brest-Litowsk bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (Munich, 1966). 14 BL R3101/1168 bl. 251, Niederschrift über die Chefbesprechung am 18. Juni 1918, betreffend wirtschaftliche Maßnahmen in der Ukraine; also BL R3101/1168 bl. 136, Niederschrift der Besprechung über die zukünftige Wirtschaftspolitik in der Ukraine und Gross-Russland am Freitag den 14. Juni 1918. For Roedern’s letter to Kuhlmann, see BL R3101/1168 bl. 302, Staatssekretär des Reichsschatzamts to Staatsekretär des auswärtigen Amts, 29 May 1918. Similar arguments were advanced in meetings earlier in June. The participants beyond Freiherr von Stein are more difficult to discern, so I have emphasized the meeting of 18 June here, see BL R3101/1168 bl. 135, Niederschrift der Besprechung über Fragen der Wirtschaftspolitik in Gross-Russland und der Ukraine am Dienstag, den 4. Juni 1918, BL R3101/1168 bl. 136, Niederschrift der Besprechung über die zukünftige Wirtschaftspolitik in der Ukraine und Gross-Russland am Freitag den 14. Juni 1918 (Fortsetzung der Besprechung von 4.VI.18). 15 BL R3101/1168 bl. 258, Ludendorff to Reichswirtschaftsamt, 19 June1918. 16 G. Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914–1924 (Oxford, 1993), p. 46. 17 BL R 2/3889 bl. 5–16, Reichsbank-Direktoriums, Havenstein and Glasnap to Reichskanzler, 8 March 1918. An excellent review of German war finances is found in Feldman, Great Disorder. 18 B. Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939 (Oxford, 1996), p. 81. 19 BL R 2/3889, Staatssekretär des Reichsschatzamtes Graf Roedern und Präsident des Reichsbank-Direktoriums Havenstein to Reichskanzler, 29 July 1918. 20 For postwar financial politics, see A. Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 (New York, 2015); H. James, The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (Cambridge, MA, 2002); Eichengreen, Golden Fetters. Helfferich’s orthodoxy is evident in K. Helfferich, ‘Aussenhandel und Valutaschwankungen’, Studien über Geld- und Bankwesen (Berlin, 1900); K. Helfferich, Das Geld (Leipzig, 1903). 21 BL R901/87031 bl. 27, Reichsbank Direktorium to Auswärtigen Amt, 8 July 1918; BL R901/87031 bl. 31, Wiefeldt to Reichswirtschaftsamt telegram, 9 July 1918; BL R3101/1168 bl. 138, Niederschrift der Besprechung über die zukünftige Wirtschaftspolitik in der Ukraine und Gross-Russland am Freitag, den 12. Juli 1918 (Fortsetzung der Besprechung vom 14.VI.18). 22 Feldman, Great Disorder, pp. 32–8. 23 BL R3101/1168 bl. 138, Niederschrift der Besprechung über die zukünftige Wirtschaftspolitik in der Ukraine und Gross-Russland am Freitag, den 12. Juli 1918 (Fortsetzung der Besprechung vom 14.VI.18). 24 F. Golczewski, Deutsche und Ukrainer 1914–1939 (Paderborn, 2010), pp. 199–244. 25 O. Czernin, Im Weltkrieg (Berlin, 1919); G. Ritter, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk: das Problem des Militarismus in Deutschland (Munich, 1965); Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik. See also M. Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916–1918 (London, 1976). 26 Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, vol. 2, pp. 828–9. 27 Tooze, Deluge. 28 Borowsky, Deutsche Ukrainepolitik, pp. 126, 131. 29 Ibid., p. 169. 30 A. Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I (New York, 2014), p. 465. 31 BL R901/81077 bl. 159, Staatssekretär von Stein to Reichskanzler, 28 June 1918. 32 BL R43/247 bl. 17, Ergebnis der Besprechung im Gr.H.Qu. am 31 Juli 1917 betreffend Kurland—Litauen; BL R43/247 bl. 22, Ergebnis der Besprechung zwischen dem Herrn Reichskanzler und der Obersten Heeresleitung; BL R43/247 bl. 48, Berliner Besprechung, 4 Nov. 1917. 33 BL R2/2559, Stein to Helfferich and Kuhlmann, 10 Dec. 1917; BL R2/2559 bl. 33, Aktenvermerk, Reichsschatzamt, 10 Dec. 1917; BL R2/2559 bl. 106–108, Aufzeichnung über die Besprechung vom 22. Dezember 1917 im Reichsamt des Innern über Präliminarfrieden mit Rußland. 34 BL 3101/881 bl. 2, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Staatssekretär des Reichswirtschaftsamts, 16 April 1918; BL R704/51 bl. 165, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Helfferich, 16 April 1918. The Office of the Interior was troubled by the Reichsbank’s suggestion that the Baltic states might be granted votes in the Bundestag because of the precedent set for other border states and a fear that Bundestag representation might lead to Reichstag representation; see BL 3101/881 bl. 14, Staatssekretär des Innern to Reichsbankdirektorium, 25 April 1918. 35 For Interior Office’s anxieties, see BL 3101/881 bl. 14, Staatssekretär des Innern to Reichsbankdirektorium, 25 April 1918. Treaty language in BL R3101/881 bl. 16, Entwurf eines Bündnis-Vertrags geschlossen von dem Deutschen Reiche, dem Herzogtum Kurland, dem Großfürstentum Litauen; BL R3101/881 bl. 27, Erläuterungen zu dem Entwurf eines Bündnis-Vertrags zwischen dem Deutschen Reiche, dem Herzogtum Kurland, dem Großfürstentum Litauen; BL R2/2564 bl. 73, Entwurf eines Währungsvertrages zwischen dem Deutschen Reich und dem Herzogtum Kurland (Großfürstentum Litauen). 36 BL R704/51 bl. 165, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Helfferich, 16 April 1918. 37 BL R3101/875 bl. 4, Aufzeichnung über die Besprechung im Reichsamt des Innern vom 27. Mai 1916 über eine Währungsunion mit Belgien nach dem Kriege; BL R704/98 bl. 7, Staatsrechtliche und wirtschaftliche Friedensbedingungen betreffend Belgien. Der Stellvertreter des Reichskanzler, 7 Sept. 1917. 38 BL R704/52 bl. 11, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Helfferich, 8 Dec. 1917; BL R704/52 bl. 23, Mendelssohn, Bleichröder, Diskonto-Gesellschaft, Berliner Handelsgesellschaft to Staatssekretär des Auswärtigen Amtes, 10 Dec. 1917. 39 BL R704/52 bl. 55, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Stein, 27 Dec. 1918. 40 The exchange rate in 1918 was shifting daily as the value of the ruble dropped. In 1913, 1 rouble = 2.14 marks. In December 1917, the Stockholm Exchange priced 1 rouble = 0.87 mark (BL R704/52 bl. 29, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Helfferich, 20 Dec. 1917). 41 BL R704/52 bl. 11, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Helfferich, 8 Dec. 1917. 42 BL R704/52 bl. 8, Memo, A. Gwinner, 8 Dec. 1917; BL R704/52 bl. 11, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Helfferich, 8 Dec. 1917. 43 BL R704/52 bl. 23, Mendelssohn, Bleichröder, Diskonto-Gesellschaft, Berliner Handelsgesellschaft to Staatssekretär des Auswärtigen Amtes, 10 Dec. 1917; BL R704/52 bl. 54, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Staatsekretär des Auswärtigen Amtes, 13 Dec. 1917; BL R704/52 bl. 55, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Stein, 27 Dec. 1918. 44 BL R704/52 bl. 29, Reichsbank-Direktorium to Helfferich, 20 Dec. 1917. 45 Eley, Nazism as Fascism, pp. 136–8; T. Snyder, Black Earth; The Holocaust as History and Warning (New York, 2015), p. 26; J. Casteel, Russia in the German Global Imaginary (Pittsburgh, 2016); V. Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front. Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, 2000). 46 C. Kindleberger, ‘Commercial Policy between the Wars’, in P. Mathias and S. Pollard (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire, vol. 8: The Industrial Economies: The Development of Economic and Social Policies (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 161–96; D. E. Moggridge, ‘The Gold Standard and National Financial Policies, 1919–39’, in Mathias and Pollard, Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 8, pp. 250–314; Eichengreen, Golden Fetters, p. 67. 47 S. Gross, ‘Gold, Debt and the Quest for Monetary Order: The Nazi Campaign to Integrate Europe in 1940’, Contemporary European History 26, 2 (2017), pp. 287–309; James, End of Globalization; Eichengreen, Golden Fetters; Tooze, Deluge; L. Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (New York, 2009). 48 See, for example, Eichengreen, Golden Fetters, pp. 42–5. 49 Hull, Absolute Destruction; I. Hull, Scrap of Paper. Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War (Ithaca, NY, 2014). Margaret Lavinia Anderson raised the Sonderweg question in her 2006 review essay, ‘How German Is It?’, German History, 24, 1 (2006) pp. 122–6. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - The Reichsbank and German War Aims in 1918
JF - German History
DO - 10.1093/gerhis/ghz020
DA - 2019-12-12
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-reichsbank-and-german-war-aims-in-1918-MFFM12oHGc
SP - 500
VL - 37
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -