The Downfall of Money: Germanys Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Frederick Taylor
Holland, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and perhaps Italy, Sweden and Norway. This association will not have any common constitutional supreme authority and all its members will be normally equal, but in practice will be under German leadership and must stabilise Germany’s economic dominance over Mitteleuropa.
The question of colonial acquisitions, where the first aim is the creation of a continuous Central African colonial empire, will be considered later, as will that of the aims to be realised vis-à-vis Russia.
A short provisional formula suitable for a possible preliminary peace to be found for a basis for the economic agreements to be concluded with France and Belgium.
Holland.
It will have to be considered by what means and methods Holland can be brought into closer relationship with the German Empire.
In view of the Dutch character, this closer relationship must leave them free of any feeling of compulsion, must alter nothing in the Dutch way of life, and must also subject them to no new military obligations. Holland, then, must be left independent in externals, but be made internally dependent on us. Possibly one might consider an offensive and defensive alliance, to cover the colonies; in any case a close customs association, perhaps the cession of Antwerp to Holland in return for the right to keep a German garrison in the fortress of Antwerp and at the mouth of the Scheldt. 13
Even as a summary of daydreams experienced during a time of euphoria – the Germany army was still advancing on the Marne, with Paris in its sights – the memorandum is a drastic piece of work. It cannot be asserted that this amounted to a firm policy – historians have been arguing about this issue since the document was discovered in the 1950s in an East German archive – but it seems unquestionable that according to these lights, if she won, Germany planned to exercise dominance in Europe. Ruthlessly so.
Admittedly, on the other side, agreements were also being made as the war went on which, to modern sensibilities, appear monstrously unjust and high-handed. There was the secret treaty between the Entente powers awarding Imperial Russia control over the Dardanelles and Constantinople (now Istanbul) after victory. Another set of secret agreements, under which Italy entered the war on the Entente side, promised Rome substantial chunks of Austria and the Aegean islands as well as German colonies. Finally, there was the breathtaking hypocrisy of the so-called Sykes–Picot Agreement, which, even as the Entente encouraged Arabs to raise the standard of rebellion against their Turkish overlords, proposed to divide up the Arabic-speaking Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq) between Britain and France. Though concealed beneath slogans of peaceful development and democracy, this amounted to a new, even more toxic final bout of opportunistic imperialist expansion, one for which our world is still paying a heavy price.
Bethmann-Hollweg’s ‘September Programme’ was a radical proposal, but by no means the most extreme of the plans being floated around quite respectable mainstream political circles in the Reich during the course of the war. These also included large-scale annexations in western Russia and the Baltic lands as well as even more sweeping losses for France and Belgium. 14 The peculiarity of the discussion within Germany, however, rested in the participants’ blatant assumption of the absolute and permanent dominance in Europe that would follow victory. Everyone from government figures, industrialists and extreme nationalists – sometimes all three functions were combined within individual human beings – discussed such plans for boundless supremacy of German political, military and economic interests as if they were natural and right.
The purpose of detailing all this is not to apportion blame – though that would all too soon become a game everyone would play and which continues in historical
The question of colonial acquisitions, where the first aim is the creation of a continuous Central African colonial empire, will be considered later, as will that of the aims to be realised vis-à-vis Russia.
A short provisional formula suitable for a possible preliminary peace to be found for a basis for the economic agreements to be concluded with France and Belgium.
Holland.
It will have to be considered by what means and methods Holland can be brought into closer relationship with the German Empire.
In view of the Dutch character, this closer relationship must leave them free of any feeling of compulsion, must alter nothing in the Dutch way of life, and must also subject them to no new military obligations. Holland, then, must be left independent in externals, but be made internally dependent on us. Possibly one might consider an offensive and defensive alliance, to cover the colonies; in any case a close customs association, perhaps the cession of Antwerp to Holland in return for the right to keep a German garrison in the fortress of Antwerp and at the mouth of the Scheldt. 13
Even as a summary of daydreams experienced during a time of euphoria – the Germany army was still advancing on the Marne, with Paris in its sights – the memorandum is a drastic piece of work. It cannot be asserted that this amounted to a firm policy – historians have been arguing about this issue since the document was discovered in the 1950s in an East German archive – but it seems unquestionable that according to these lights, if she won, Germany planned to exercise dominance in Europe. Ruthlessly so.
Admittedly, on the other side, agreements were also being made as the war went on which, to modern sensibilities, appear monstrously unjust and high-handed. There was the secret treaty between the Entente powers awarding Imperial Russia control over the Dardanelles and Constantinople (now Istanbul) after victory. Another set of secret agreements, under which Italy entered the war on the Entente side, promised Rome substantial chunks of Austria and the Aegean islands as well as German colonies. Finally, there was the breathtaking hypocrisy of the so-called Sykes–Picot Agreement, which, even as the Entente encouraged Arabs to raise the standard of rebellion against their Turkish overlords, proposed to divide up the Arabic-speaking Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq) between Britain and France. Though concealed beneath slogans of peaceful development and democracy, this amounted to a new, even more toxic final bout of opportunistic imperialist expansion, one for which our world is still paying a heavy price.
Bethmann-Hollweg’s ‘September Programme’ was a radical proposal, but by no means the most extreme of the plans being floated around quite respectable mainstream political circles in the Reich during the course of the war. These also included large-scale annexations in western Russia and the Baltic lands as well as even more sweeping losses for France and Belgium. 14 The peculiarity of the discussion within Germany, however, rested in the participants’ blatant assumption of the absolute and permanent dominance in Europe that would follow victory. Everyone from government figures, industrialists and extreme nationalists – sometimes all three functions were combined within individual human beings – discussed such plans for boundless supremacy of German political, military and economic interests as if they were natural and right.
The purpose of detailing all this is not to apportion blame – though that would all too soon become a game everyone would play and which continues in historical
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