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Printing Time - by Angus Bylsma
The dominant interpretation in Germany was the “balance-of-payments school”, which argued reparations were the root cause. Finding the foreign currency to meet reparations placed downwards pressure on the mark and induced a trade surplus. Inflation, so it went, was hence not primarily a result of currency creation, but depreciation ‘inevitably’ induced by fulfilling (or attempting to fulfil) Versailles. This theory made the inflation not Germany’s ‘problem’; and implicitly sent an ultimatum to the Allies: choose reparations, and suffer unemployment as your industries are outcompeted by a Germany that must continually devalue.
Outside of Germany, however, the “quantity school” was more influential. It stressed that the balance-of-payments issue was exaggerated, while deficit spending of the Weimar government was to blame for the inflation. This, of course, suited many Allied politicians, who argued Germany was not taking reparations seriously; spending beyond its means - on food subsidies and the railroads, in particular - while deliberately using inflation as a tool to support heavy industry. Pleading poverty was intended to undermine Versailles: that the eight-hour day, a keystone of the Revolution, remained while reparations payments were left unmet seemed a smoking gun.