The German Question, Part Ninety-Nine

"Germany's Weimar Republic"-Part Two
"Economic Mess"

The German post-war economy was a mess. The Allies continued the blockade of Germany, even after the armistice, severely restricting the type of goods that could be imported into Germany. The loss of Alsace-Lorraine to France and certain parts of the eastern territories to the reborn Poland removed large amounts of  industry, raw materials, and food products. The war's consequences continued economically, as trade relationships had been disrupted or destroyed by the war. The shift back to a peacetime economy was not easy for any country, but it was especially difficult in Germany, where economic conditions were even poor during the last couple years of the war. Factories that had produced war goods could not easily switch to non military goods and make a profit in an economy where many people by then were impoverished. With jobs scare, some demobilized soldiers joined the ranks of "political armies," like the "Freikorps," on the right, or the left wing groups more in concert with communism. Street fights between these various political "armies" were not uncommon, and periodic calls for strikes by both right wing and left wing groups only further disrupted the weakened German economy.

The unpopular Treaty of Versailles gave those on the far right a chance to blame the left of center government for signing the treaty, although these same extremists never made clear a viable alternative to signing the treaty. Would they have proposed restarting the war? That was really the only alternative and I think we all can make a very educated guess as to what the military outcome would have been. The question is, what would the political outcome have been? With economic conditions so poor during the last couple of years of the war, and with so many dispirited Germans, re-initiating hostilities may well have brought a communist government to power.

The Versailles Treaty made Germany responsible for reparations mainly to Belgium and France. When the Germans defaulted on some aspects (mainly timber and coal) of these payments, French and Belgian troops entered Germany in January of 1923 and occupied the Ruhr, the country's main industrial region.*

Coming up in the next couple of articles: "The Occupation of the Ruhr," "The Cost of a Loaf of Bread-Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany," and "The Right Wing Strikes Back-Blaming Socialists and Jews For Germany's Defeat"

*The German government claimed it could not meet all reparations. The Belgians and French argued that the Germans were simply playing games to see if the Allies would enforce the reparations' provisions of the treaty. The British and Americans wanted the amount of reparations to be lowered, which only irritated the French that much more.

WORD HISTORY:
Hem-The history of this word is a bit sketchy. It "likely" goes back to an Old Germanic form like hemjam/hemjan," which then traces back to Indo European "kem/khem," with the notion of "compress, enclose something, fit something inside an area." Old English (Anglo-Saxon) had "hem," with the basic notion of "border," and thus also "block;" as in "block in;" that is, "hem in," (a border "blocks" easy access to other areas, and "border" also ties in with the "enclose something" idea). Later English also spelled it "hemm." The variant forms "hamm" or "ham" (not the meat), often used in English place names, like "Nottingham,* meant "something enclosed, enclosed area;" even enclosed or "bordered" by water, forests, hills, etc, when used of towns or villages. It is closely related to "home;" that is, "an enclosed place to live." The verb form "hem" came from the noun during the 1300s. Of course in more modern times, "hem" is used more for the "stitched border of a garment." German has "hemmen" as a verb, meaning, among other things, "to stop, impede, obstruct," and "Hemmung," a noun meaning "a restraint," and "Hemmnis," another noun meaning "an obstruction, obstacle." From what I can tell, Dutch once also had "hemmen," as in German, but it is no longer used. Low German has "hemmen," meaning "to brake," and "Hamme," "a fenced in field," Swedish has "hämma," which means "impede, hinder." The English expression "hem and haw" shows the "hem in/block in" notion, for an action or idea that can't get moving due to being blocked by procrastination. 

* Obviously this form also came to some place names in the New World too, brought here by English colonists.