1929 Economic
Citations (1)
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers whole source · open book
While things had vastly improved by the late 1920s in consequence of the general prosperity and of Stresemann’s successes in enhancing Germany’s position by diplomacy, the country still was a politically troubled “half-free” Great Power when the financial and commercial crises of 1929–1933 devastated both its precarious economy and its much-disliked Weimar democracy.70 If the advent of Hitler transformed Germany’s position in Europe within a matter of years, it is important to recall the points made earlier: that virtually every German was a “revisionist” to a greater or lesser degree and much of the early Nazi foreign-policy program represented a continuity with the past ambitions of German nationalists and the suppressed armed forces; that the 1919–1922 border settlements in east-central Europe were seen as unsatisfactory by many other nations and ethnic groups, who pressed for changes long before the Nazis seized power, and were willing to join Berlin in amending them; that Germany, despite its losses of territory, population, and raw materials, retained the industrial potential to be the greatest of the European powers; and that the international balances which were needed to contain a resurgence of German aggrandizement were now far more disparate, and much less coordinated, than prior to 1914.
chapter: The Challengers