How statist was the Weimar Republic (scale of zero to 10, and it wouldn’t be a zero because it was a state and it wouldn’t be a 10 because its successor was a 10)?
Were most Germans really that poor during the Weimar Republic or did a lot of innovations and tech come from the Weimar Republic?
Is it accurate to say the Treaty of Versaille was neither anti-market nor pro-market overall since it intended to limit Germany’s military (and consequently reduced mercantilist policy) and because it took revenues out of the market for debt payment?
I was thinking the average statistness of the Weimar Republic was about like it was here from Harding through Hoover. Hoover was a pretty hardcore statist, but Harding and Coolidge weren’t really that statist as far as Presidents go.
My assumptions could be totally wrong for all I know so that’s why I’m asking.
- It’s hard to say how statist it was because I don’t know what your frame of reference is. The Germans were definitely more statist than their counterpart in the US at the time. The Weimer Republic was a socialist government.
The government was wholly consumed with reparations/debt problem and the social impacts it caused. They were constantly trying to put out fires that hyper inflation caused. Labor unions were constantly having to renegotiate wage rates, there were communist threats, political assassinations, strikes, demonstrations, etc., it was truly a mess.
- Most Germans were extremely poor during the Weimer reign, one stat that really popped out to me was the children’s height/weight post and pre war. School children were often grossly under nourished in post war Germany.
Anybody who relied on a salary was destroyed, the intellectual, administrative/bureaucratic, and pensioner classes - essentially the entire middle class - was wiped out due to the inflation.
- The Treaty of Versailles was anti-German. Castrating the Germans military was important because it allowed the Allies to impose their will when Germany could not meet its reparations payments. The closing of the Rhur by the French military was a huge blow to German coal production and therefore their economic output.
The treaty of Versailles was not neutral in the context of the market. It was a great burden on the German mark. By the time hyper inflation set in, the mark was depreciating more rapidly than the Reichsbank could print. They literally couldn’t print faster than the mark was depreciating.
I’d recommend Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Ferguson’s When Money Dies if you are interested in the subject. I think you can find both books here at the LVMI.