Talk:Dawes Plan

CITATION
I have a citation that I think reinforces the sentence in "The initial German debt default" section where a [citation needed] link is. I do not have the technical expertise to make the edit myself and I've become frustrated working in the "sandbox".

The last sentence of that section: "This occupation of the center....hyperinflation that followed." is supported by a few paragraphs from -

Shirer, William L. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH: A History of Nazi Germany (1990) p.61, Touchstone, New York, NY [ISBN: 0-671-72868-7 (pbk.)] 96.244.67.80 (talk) 04:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Another citation is in Jeremy Noakes', Documents on Nazism, 1919-1945. Viking Press, New York, NY, 1975. Page 52-53. It reads:

"During 1923, the political situation in Germany became increasingly critical. At the end of 1922, Germany had been in arrears in the reparations owed to the Allies under the Versailles Treaty and subsequent agreements. The amount was small but on 11 January 1923 French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr area, the main centre of Germany's heavy industry, with the intention of acquiring coal and using the Ruhr as a pawn. The German Government retaliated by ordering the inhabitants of the Ruhr to offer passive resistance to the French. The economic disruption caused by the Ruhr occupation gave the final blow to the value of the German mark which had been rapidly deteriorating since the war."

He goes on to talk more about the hyperinflation and the decreasing value of the German mark in the post WWI economy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.168.114.173 (talk) 21:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Irony
It's a little ironic that the USA made loans to Germany, so that Germany could make reparations to the UK and France, so that they in turn could repay their loans to the USA...


 * I'm researching this for an essay (but I swear I only use wikipedia for last names, i.e. ??? Dawes), and I found this great political cartoon in one of the older books. It shows the German chancellor writing an IOU for the French premier, writing an IOU for the British PM, who's looking at Uncle Sam, who's saying "give it all here now."  - Darkhawk

Re:Irony
Not really.

That's why the plan failed; it was just circular. --DarkAdonis255 22:02, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

There is some controversy as to how much of the plan's failure was due to it's own formulation and how much was due to other far larger issues. In reality the economic spin off in terms of additional people employed and increased production worldwide was considerable for quite a few years prior to the program's cessation.--209.177.1.132 15:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)jstone6487
 * So was the additional money extracted, I'd guess. Essentially this was a huge scam ultimately detrimental to the economies of the countries involved. --105.7.228.68 (talk) 01:57, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Meaning of statement
I'm a little concerned by the following statement: After World War I, this cycle of money from U.S. loans to Germany, which then made reparations to other European nations, which then used the money to pay off their debts to America, locked the western world's economy on that of the U.S., a situation which proved disastrous.

Particularly, I question whether the flow of debt indeed made any nation dependent on the US (they could default, so at best all nations were dependent upon each other) or that this situation proved disastrous. I believe that the economic conditions typically associated with the Great Depression in the US began earlier in Europe. The Great Depression is a complicated and not even now well understood phenomenon, and I think this paragraph makes too strong a statement. Coleca 08:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

RE: Meaning of Statement
I'm pretty sure that this is generally accepted to be a cause of the Depression, at least in part. Agreed, though, that the statement is pretty strong. 24.129.72.195 (talk) 01:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Barclay School Committee ?
This is mentioned in a subhead, but no further explanation is provided. What does it mean? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.169.189.226 (talk) 04:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The Barclay School Committee is established? It seems not.
I cannot find any other reference, either online or in print, to a "Barclay School Committee." This looks like deliberate mis-information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.151.94.92 (talk) 16:15, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Was the plan succesful?
I happen to notice that the french Wikipage states that the plan was indeed a success. which is in contradiction with the .org-version. I posted this note in the french version too. --91.180.169.137 (talk) 15:34, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

"Billions"
In the article, the word "billion" is used a lot. I use .en and I'm wondering if the US version (if there is one) says 1,000,000,000,000 (which is a British billion) or the american 1,000,000,000. I don't know what the actual figure is (since I was looking at the page to find out lol) so if someone does could they sort that out? I'm assuming it's an American billion since that's what people officially use, but it's possible it could be misinterpreted.

MaelstromOfSilence (talk) 22:46, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

You've got it round backwards, the old english definition is the larger , 10^12 (which we call a trillion today) But Your point does indeed stand and in fact it does need a small sub section to explain the meaning of billion has changed — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.9.236.18 (talk) 00:56, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Student source - Not acceptable / Which source
This document is produced by a student about a key question : the alleged origins of the hyperinflation. Please just quote John Meynard Keynes. Thank you, --Marc-AntoineV (talk) 07:49, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Such a source is not acceptable. This does not correspondent to the principles of core content policies fore instance Verifiability. Orik (talk) 15:36, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
 * p.s. under the references we find a book „All honorable men" from a certain James Martin. The biblograpical data are missing.

Article needs to be rewritten
I plan to rewrite this article over the next couple of weeks. I think it's necessary because the article is based almost entirely on the James Martin book, which was written almost 75 years ago (1950) by someone whose focus makes it a questionable source -- e.g. the publisher's review (see Google books) describes it as "A scathing attack on Wall Street’s illegal ties to Nazi Germany before WWII—and the postwar whitewashing of Nazi business leaders by the US government."

The rewrite will affect mostly "The initial German debt defaults" and "Results" sections and will provide more sources throughout. If anyone has any concerns or suggestions, please let me know.

GHStPaulMN (talk) 11:57, 13 October 2023 (UTC)