Poland Interwar Hyperinflation Taylor

The Downfall of Money: Germany’s Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Middle Class, by Frederick Taylor. 2013

Hyperinflation Exculpation for Nazism Fails. Poland and Many Other Countries Also Had Hyperinflation, Yet Never Produced a Hitler

This work focuses not only on monetary issues, but also the entire history of Germany right after WWI. I focus on a few major issues:

THE ATTEMPTED COMMUNIST TAKEOVER OF GERMANY

Taylor discusses Communist violence in 1918-1919. This violence persisted in various parts of Germany (p. 91), even though Taylor tries to belittle it as having no chance of bringing the Communists to power. (p. 92). (How does he know this? What about the 1920 Polish-Bolshevik War, which, according to Lenin, was to spread to Germany? What about the Communist doctrine of “permanent revolution”?) Taylor also fails to mention that the young Corporal Hitler personally witnessed the largely-Jewish Communist violence in Bavaria, and that this experience was a factor in the development of his virulent anti-Semitism.

GERMAN HYPERINFLATION NOT UNIQUE: POLAND HAD IT TOO

The standard explanation (or exculpation) for the Germans supporting Hitler revolves around German hyperinflation. Perhaps the most valuable part of this work is summarized by Taylor, “Of course, it was economic depression, not inflation, that finally brought Hitler to the Reich Chancellery, on 30 January 1933…Specifically a GERMAN trauma, though? Why is this? After all, the German inflation of 1914 to 1923—it was a much slower, and more toxic process than most people think—was not the only example of this phenomenon. For instance, after the First World War, Austria, Hungary, Russia and Poland suffered from hyperinflation. In fact, Hungary underwent the experience once more after the Second World War, on an even worse scale. As did Greece, France, and Italy at various points suffered from severe to hyperinflation, too, but none of these countries seems to have been permanently scarred by the experience in the same way.” (Emphasis in the original). (p. 343). Why not? Taylor does not tell us.

Instead, Taylor tries to explain the trauma in terms of the educated German middle class, the BILDUNGSBURGERTUM, having lost their wealth and their prestige. (p. 344). However, his argument sounds exculpatory in nature, and begs the question about peoples in other countries that had lost their wealth and prestige at various times, yet did not become Nazi-like.

PRE-NAZI POGROMS IN WEIMAR GERMANY

German violence against Jews long preceded the appearance of the Nazis as a serious political entity. Taylor discusses the Scheunenviertel pogrom in 1923. (pp. 320-on). He identifies the Scheunenviertel as a slum area in east-central Berlin, where large numbers of Polish Jews lived. The assailants were not Nazis: They were working-class Germans. (p. 321). Anti-Semitic violence soon spread to Erfurt, Nuremberg, Coburg, Bremen, and Oldenburg. (p. 322).

SHORTCOMINGS OF THIS WORK

Although author Taylor once tangentially refers to Jewish speculators (p. 179), he avoids the pertinent subject of Jews and hyperinflation. This issue should be addressed candidly and intelligently. Jews had been accused of profiteering from German hyperinflation–not only by Nazis and Germans, but also non-Nazis and non-Germans.

THE AUTHOR’S GERMANOCENTRIC BIASES

Taylor uncritically treats the Allied bombing of Germany during WWII —a subject irrelevant to the contents of this book to begin with–an immoral act. (p. 372). Author Frederick Taylor also unambiguously comes down on the German side regarding the Polish-German dispute over Upper Silesia (p. 180), failing to inform the reader about falsifications of the plebiscite. He also refers to Torun (Thorn) as “a Prussian city that in 1918 had passed to Poland”. (p. 109). Actually, Torun had been a Polish city under German occupation.