rishaed wrote:Juan_Bottom wrote:Naw, it was absolutely a wreck. I'm not saying it was a good system, I'm just saying that it appeared to work like magic. In the short term everything looked excellent, Germans were producing, and everyone felt secure, excepting for the persecuted. Everyone in Europe wanted to know how the Nazi's did it, and that got them a lot of support abroad. People love you when you're winning. But it was also a self-destructive system. It was only the conquest of neighboring countries that enable Germany to continue the way she did.
Many of these techniques have been modified and are still in practice today, like the art of lending yourself money. And I don't think any of us have a positive view of this. And at least 1 person here doesn't have a good view of conquering your neighbors to help shore up your finances. I do have some respect for the impressive way Schacht was able to manipulate everything to create massive economic growth during a Depression. But frankly aside from that the whole program was disgusting to a Democratic Socialist like me.
If anything WW2 got the U.S. of the depresssion as well. We sold weapons to both sides, our manufacturing went through the roof, and people got a ton of jobs. There were other factors in Germany resulting in the depression as well. All those huge indemnities to france (and other nations?) from WW1 and all that? There was no way the wrecked german economy could support that on top of their own populations economic security. That and France took away one of their best economic assets in the Rhine Valley. Hitler: A. Took back the Rhine (remember HUGE economic asset). And started manufacturing there. Breach of treaty from WW1 and all, but it did get the German economy running again. Also somewhere in there he stopped paying the indemnities I'm pretty sure. If your going to say that it was selfdestructive, from your earlier post you aren't including all of the factors.
Thank you for responding decently, and letting me know someone is thinking over what I've said.
I did account for both of those factors, because yes of course they were some of the larger missteps to war. But they were split up between posts so they were easy to look over:
1936 - Seizes the Rhineland - only murmurs of protests from world leaders as the area has been traditionally German.
The Nazi's set up a system of price-controls, Hitler stopped making reparations payments, and had a secrete system put in place so that Germany could essentially loan itself money.
To my knowledge, the United States government didn't sell any weapons to the Nazis, but private citizens were allowed to make money from selling things to the Nazis. At the outbreak of WWII our weapons programs were well behind everyone else's, and Germany had the most advanced everything... which is probably why we didn't sell them anything. America First and other isolationist political groups also kept us from doing much... there were few Americans with the balls to take action or the foresight to see that war was inevitable.
I don't think it was necessarily the war that brought everyone out of the Depression, because Germany lifted itself out of the Depression with it's secret war preparations. It wasn't sustainable, but it is interesting. Obviously though, yes the War was the #1 factor in ending the Depression.
But the question is, is Russia leading Europe into the same stupid war that Germany did? I'm concerned that it is.
