In Europe

love – was mercurial and relative? It was all because of the reparation payments demanded by that damnable Versailles, the right-wing Germans shouted. (They conveniently forgot that there actually
was
a great deal to be compensated
for
: in Belgium in particular, Germany had caused unbelievable damage for no good reason at all. In addition, the total sum to be paid was lower than the damage claims France had been forced to pay Germany less than fifty years earlier.) According to the terms of the treaty, Germany would have to pay 1.8 billion marks in damages annually, up to the year 1988.
    In truth, however, the reparation payments had only a minimal effect on inflation. The collapse of the mark was due primarily to the enormous public debts engendered by the Germans themselves between 1914–18, for a total sum of 164 billion marks. Of that, 119 billion hadbeen raised with the sales of patriotic war bonds – those who put their savings into such bonds never saw their money again – while the balance was funded by simply printing more money. The Germans had hoped to set everything right once they had taken Paris and could demand damages from the French and British. Germany's tight squeeze, therefore, was not caused solely by the reparation payments, but also and most importantly by the country having gambled on themselves receiving reparation payments.
    The crowning blow was the damage the country had incurred in the war. For example, in the late 1920s the German government was paying benefits to 761,294 war invalids, 359,560 war widows, 73,781 fatherless children, 56,623 orphans and 147,230 parents who had lost one or more sons, for total expenditures of more than a fifth of the national budget. The final blow to the economy was dealt by the primitive way in which the government tried to deal with the problem. They printed more money. And printed it faster and faster.
    Then, suddenly, the whole crisis was over. Within three months a new chancellor, Gustav Stresemann, had the Germany economy back on its feet. On 15 November, 1923 a new currency was issued: drab little banknotes on which was printed ‘Rentenmark’. The value of the new currency was supposedly based on collateral consisting of Germany's total gold reserve, ground and other property. In reality, none of that was true, but the fact that the Germans believed it turned out to be enough. On Saturday, 17 November the
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
cost ‘90 billion marks = 15 Goldpfennige’. On Friday, 22 November the paper cost ‘150 billion marks = 15 Goldpfennige’. Two weeks later, it was still 15 Goldpfennige. The currency held its ground. Within a month the new mark was back on a normal footing with the dollar, at an exchange rate of 4.2:1.
    With the arrival of the Rentenmark, things quieted down. The pressure imposed by the reparation payments was eased by means of an ingenious plan drawn up by the American banker Charles Dawes. American money was actually being invested in the country. In 1925, Stresemann was replaced as chancellor, but continued to play an important role until 1929 as minister of foreign affairs. General Hindenburg was elected president in 1925, and even the conservatives began gaining a little confidence in Weimar under the reign of this surrogate kaiser.
    International relations, too, grew less tense. For the first time, the European governments were trying to use the League of Nations to resolve a number of issues: the consequences of the collapse of the Austrian economy, the Macedonian conflict between Greece and Bulgaria, the status of the cities of Danzig and Vilnius, the issue of the Saar and the former German colonies, and the administration of the trust territories of Syria and Palestine. The French minister of foreign affairs, Aristide Briand, was tireless in his efforts on behalf of Franco-German reconciliation. He launched an early initiative for something like a European federation, aimed at creating a lasting peace within a broader context as well.
    The Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928, in which the world ‘unconditionally and definitively’ renounced war as a political instrument, was signed by fifteen states, including France and Germany. The League of Nations, however, never implemented the pact. That was typical of the League's role: at Versailles, the Allies had left the solving of a number of thorny and potentially dangerous issues – the status of Danzig was one of those that finally precipitated the Second