"Germany can generally only pay if the Corridor and Upper Silesia will be handed back to Germany from Polish possession, and if besides somewhere on the earth colonial territory will be made available to Germany"
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Hjalmar Schacht ties Germanys capacity to meet reparations to the reversal of territorial losses and the restoration of an imperial resource base. Payment, he suggests, is possible only if Germany regains the Polish Corridor and Upper Silesia and acquires colonial territory somewhere on the globe. Economics and geopolitics are fused: solvency becomes contingent on land, raw materials, and access to trade routes.
The setting is the post-World War I settlement. The Treaty of Versailles stripped Germany of all its overseas colonies and transferred swaths of territory to neighboring states. The Polish Corridor severed East Prussia from the rest of Germany and granted Poland access to the sea through a corridor surrounding the Free City of Danzig. Upper Silesia, after plebiscites and violence, was divided, with a valuable industrial zone going to Poland. These changes were more than symbolic. Upper Silesias coal and steel mattered for industrial output, and the corridor complicated east-west transport and customs, with real effects on trade costs and competitiveness. Meanwhile, reparations demanded by the Allies strained public finances and fed inflationary fears.
Schacht, as Reichsbank president and later economics minister, became the most prominent German interlocutor in negotiations over the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. His line of argument presents reparations as financially and materially unviable unless the victors relax the settlement. It is both bargaining tactic and ideological move: by framing payment as dependent on resource restitution, he casts territorial revision as economic necessity rather than revanchism. The demand for colonies invokes a broader imperial logic common in the era, where access to raw materials and captive markets was seen as the foundation of national power.
The sentiment anticipates the revisionist trajectory of the 1930s. Even as temporary stabilization arrived through foreign loans, the Depression unraveled payments and fueled demands to undo Versailles. Schachts formulation shows how financial obligations, territorial claims, and imperial ambitions became entangled, with dangerous consequences for Europe.
The setting is the post-World War I settlement. The Treaty of Versailles stripped Germany of all its overseas colonies and transferred swaths of territory to neighboring states. The Polish Corridor severed East Prussia from the rest of Germany and granted Poland access to the sea through a corridor surrounding the Free City of Danzig. Upper Silesia, after plebiscites and violence, was divided, with a valuable industrial zone going to Poland. These changes were more than symbolic. Upper Silesias coal and steel mattered for industrial output, and the corridor complicated east-west transport and customs, with real effects on trade costs and competitiveness. Meanwhile, reparations demanded by the Allies strained public finances and fed inflationary fears.
Schacht, as Reichsbank president and later economics minister, became the most prominent German interlocutor in negotiations over the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. His line of argument presents reparations as financially and materially unviable unless the victors relax the settlement. It is both bargaining tactic and ideological move: by framing payment as dependent on resource restitution, he casts territorial revision as economic necessity rather than revanchism. The demand for colonies invokes a broader imperial logic common in the era, where access to raw materials and captive markets was seen as the foundation of national power.
The sentiment anticipates the revisionist trajectory of the 1930s. Even as temporary stabilization arrived through foreign loans, the Depression unraveled payments and fueled demands to undo Versailles. Schachts formulation shows how financial obligations, territorial claims, and imperial ambitions became entangled, with dangerous consequences for Europe.
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| Topic | War |
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