Chapter 126 Prosperity Before Doomsday (Part 2)
The era of prosperity and happiness has finally arrived!
This is the inevitable result of the joint action of the Keynes Plan and the Soviet-German cooperation - just as the Great Depression will inevitably come in the future.
According to the views of mainstream economists in the 1950s and 1960s of this time and space, the Second World War was actually jointly spawned by the Treaty of Versailles and the Keynes Plan.
The former not only put Germany in a miserable situation of oppression and exploitation. It also created a super-inflation of the mark, flattened the German class, and turned most Germans into class brothers who were shoulder to shoulder - German society was no longer an olive-shaped structure with small ends and a large middle, but a combination of a few rich people and the vast majority of the proletariat.
Although the later Keynes Plan tried to appease and save Germany, it gave Germany the power to launch another world war. And it also planted a time bomb that would inevitably detonate the Second World War - this bomb was the gold exchange system that deprived Germany of its monetary sovereignty!
However, the gold exchange system was also the driving force for Germany to quickly get rid of the sluggish national fortune after World War I and move towards brilliant prosperity. In the original history, Germany also lost its monetary sovereignty, but the only difference was that it chose to peg to the US dollar instead of the British pound. The so-called "gold standard" was actually the US dollar standard, so it also attracted a large amount of foreign capital inflows in a short period of time. Together with the smaller-scale Soviet-German cooperation, it prompted the recovery of the German economy in the mid-1920s.
Now, not only has the scale of "Soviet-German cooperation" increased several times, but there is also a "kind compensation system" - this is the second highlight of the "Keynes Plan", and it is also considered to be an important reason for Germany to have the strength to launch a world war!
Because the kind compensation system is actually a trade model of government subsidies for exports! Every year, coal, steel, automobiles, aircraft (of course, civil aircraft), machinery, chemical products and ships worth 2 billion to 4 billion marks are pushed to the European market at "zero price".
For the victorious governments that receive them, it is zero price, but for the German capitalists who produce them, it is full price! It is not the manufacturers who pay for the kind compensation system, but the German government. Therefore, the interests of manufacturers will not be affected in any way. Not only will they not suffer losses, but they can also expand production and amortize fixed asset investments through these 2 billion to 4 billion marks "fixed orders" in order to obtain greater economies of scale.
Anyone who understands industrial production and manufacturing knows that the larger the scale of production, the lower the cost. The lower the cost, the more competitive the product!
The German automobile industry, machinery industry, civil aviation industry, chemical industry and mining industry, which originally had certain advantages over Britain, France and other countries, swept the European market with the help of "compensation orders". The counterparts in France and Britain were suppressed so much that they could not even breathe. They could only rely on the protection of tariff barriers to survive in their own markets.
In fact, when formulating the "Keynes Plan", Britain, France, Italy and other countries had already anticipated that their local industries might encounter the impact of German manufacturing, and they all formulated corresponding protection plans - the plan to dump products to the United States was just talk. In the 1920s, Britain, France, Italy and other countries were typical "small governments" and could not do such things at all. What they could do was to protect their own related industries as much as possible.
For example, the French government chose coal and crude steel as the main "compensation", while the British government accepted all the "compensation ships" (historically, Britain asked Germany to build ships for it as compensation). The Luxembourg and Belgian governments did not allow German steel to enter, but they welcomed German cars, aircraft and chemical products. As for the Italian government, of course, they chose German machinery and equipment as the main compensation.
However, Britain and France (which took the bulk of the compensation) still received a lot of cars, aircraft, chemical products and steel products-because they still needed gold and foreign exchange to repay their debts to the United States.
However, most of these "compensation" were not sold to the United States, but sold in European markets outside Britain, France and Italy. This is mainly because the British and French governments resold the aircraft and cars they received from Germany to relevant manufacturers in their own countries at low prices, requiring them to be sold abroad.
These British and French aircraft and car manufacturers are greedy for high profits and are rarely willing to ship these products to the United States, where competition is fierce and the journey is long. Instead, they are sold to nearby European markets-this has, to some extent, allowed the compensation to replace the production of related industries in Britain and France, reducing employment opportunities in these two countries.
Britain and France used the gold and US dollars they took back from the European market to repay their debts, which further aggravated the gold and US dollar shortage in Europe. As a result, the pound faced greater depreciation pressure in 1927 and 1928. This also determined that the Keynes Plan could not be implemented for a long time.
For Germany, its products not only had "compensation orders" to amortize costs after 1926, but also received a large number of Soviet orders. Because the scale of Soviet-German cooperation at this time was much larger than in history - Hersman successfully pried off the American business this time, at least before the Great Depression, it was difficult for American machinery and equipment to enter the Soviet market - the Soviet Union in the East seemed to have turned into a monster that devoured machinery and equipment, and it never knew how to be satisfied. No matter how many German machines there were, they could be swallowed by it, and then spit out the same value of oil, wood, non-ferrous metals and food.
Under the dual stimulation of "compensation orders" and "Soviet orders", German industry, especially German heavy industry, has changed its post-war decline since 1924. It has grown at the fastest speed.
Moreover, German heavy industry itself has become the driving force for the growth of heavy industry since 1924.
Because in order to complete the "compensation orders" and "Soviet orders" of astonishing value, they must make large-scale investments to increase production capacity! And heavy industry investment itself will also consume a large amount of heavy industry products.
According to data released by the German government, Germany's fixed asset investment grew by as much as 2120% in 1924 (fixed asset investment was very low in 1923 due to hyperinflation), and then in 1925 it increased by 55% year-on-year, in 1926 it increased by 35%, and in 1927 and 1928 it still increased by more than 30%.
However, this level of prosperity has become difficult to sustain due to the recession of the real economy in Britain and France, especially Britain. Of course, the recession in Britain was not entirely caused by the Keynes Plan. The other two main reasons were that Britain set the exchange rate of the pound against gold too high (this was done by Churchill), and at the same time insisted on implementing free trade. As a result, the British manufacturing industry has no competitiveness in front of the normal sales of German products (non-compensation products) and American products.
"This is the prosperity before the end of the world. The German people are now blinded by this false and temporary prosperity. They have forgotten that their country is still suffering humiliation and is still being cruelly exploited by foreign countries... Capital from Britain, France and the United States - most of which is Jewish capital, has penetrated into every aspect of this country. For every mark of wealth created by us Germans, they will take half a mark or even more. Of course, they have not started to take away the money invested in us, so we can still maintain the superficial prosperity. Otherwise, our economy will become as bad as that of France and Britain!"
This is Adolf Hitler's speech at a rally in a square in Berlin. There are not many listeners, probably only a few hundred people, and at least 20 of them are Miuta special forces disguised as listeners - they are here to protect Colonel Hersman, who has just returned to Berlin to serve as the director of the Military Intelligence Bureau (the intelligence was upgraded to a bureau not long ago) and his wife Chloe.
In 1926, Hersman went to the Baltic Republic to serve as deputy chief of staff of the Defense Army. This position became the public identity of the director (deputy director) of the Stasi in the Baltic in 1925. However, Hersman went to the Baltic Defense Army to serve as deputy chief of staff not only to facilitate the management of the Stasi, but also to familiarize himself with the operation of the armored forces and the air force.
Lieutenant Colonel Halder and Lieutenant Colonel Kesselring had both served in this position. After returning to Berlin, neither of them returned to the Intelligence Bureau, but were sent to the troops. So it was Lieutenant Colonel Canaris who replaced Hersman in the Berlin Intelligence Bureau.
However, after Hersman returned from the Baltic, he did not go to the troops, but served as the director of the expanded Military Intelligence Bureau. In early 1928, the departments under the General Staff were upgraded to bureaus, and the directors of the bureaus were mostly major generals. Hersman served as the director of the Military Intelligence Bureau, which naturally meant that he would soon be promoted to the rank of general!
The smooth sailing in the officialdom is not the only thing that Hirschman has gained in the past few years. Chloe gave birth to another daughter for him in 1926, named Maria. And now, Chloe's belly is bulging again. In a few months, Hirschman will become a father for the third time.
"Dear, let's go to donate to Mr. Hitler." Chloe stood up from the chair in the front row and said to her husband beside her, "I think Mr. Hitler speaks very well, and his views are exactly the same as yours."
Can it be different? In this time and space, Hitler was not influenced by Rosenberg and Karl Haushofer's "geopolitics" (Rosenberg's theory of living space is actually a kind of geopolitics). Instead, he accepted Hirschman's "currency war" theory-Hitler now believes that there is a Jewish international capital group in the world, and it is preparing to use currency war to destroy Germany. The United States and the United Kingdom have actually been controlled by this Jewish international capital group. These two countries are not only tools for them to oppress other countries, but also places where they plunder wealth...
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