I don’t have a source for this claim off the top of my head, but I’ve previously read that Germany was actually a net beneficiary of international financial transactions in the 1920s. Essentially, the flow of funds went like this:
Germany paid war reparations to the UK and France.
The UK and France paid off their war debts to the United States.
The United States made loans to Germany, and Germany defaulted on a good fraction of them.
It would be nice if someone could check whether this is true or not, but the impression I got from reading the history here is that the role of war reparations in causing fiscal problems for Germany was inflated by propaganda, especially by German politicians who tried to blackmail the Allies into lowering the amount of reparations to be paid by raising the specter of economic collapse in Germany.
I don’t have a source for this claim off the top of my head, but I’ve previously read that Germany was actually a net beneficiary of international financial transactions in the 1920s. Essentially, the flow of funds went like this:
Germany paid war reparations to the UK and France.
The UK and France paid off their war debts to the United States.
The United States made loans to Germany, and Germany defaulted on a good fraction of them.
It would be nice if someone could check whether this is true or not, but the impression I got from reading the history here is that the role of war reparations in causing fiscal problems for Germany was inflated by propaganda, especially by German politicians who tried to blackmail the Allies into lowering the amount of reparations to be paid by raising the specter of economic collapse in Germany.