The Treaty of Versailles and Subsequent Hyperinflation in Germany, page 4

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The Treaty of Versailles and Subsequent Hyperinflation in Germany: Finding the Culprit (continued)

When Germany was presented with 132 billion gold marks to be paid as punishment for inciting the war and causing the damage, she reacted with horror. In the ensuing months, Germans would perceive a catastrophic plummet in the value of the mark that would seriously disrupt the sociopolitical atmosphere. The British economist John Maynard Keynes emphasized the impracticability of the Commission’s arrangement:

If every house and factory and cultivated field, every road and railway and canal, every mine and forest in the German Empire could be ... expropriated ..., it would not pay for half the cost of the war and reparations added together.¹²

Dollar Quotations for the Mark¹³

	marks : dollar (monthly average)	percent depreciation per half month
July 1914	4.2	–––––
January 1919	8.9	9.3%
July 1919	14.0	4.8%
January 1920	64.8	30.2%
July 1920	39.5	-3.3%
January 1921	64.9	5.4%
July 1921	76.7	1.5%
January 1922	191.8	12.5%
July 1922	493.2	13.1%
January 1923	17,972.0	29.5%
July 1923	353,412.0	155.5%
August 1923	4,620,455.0	603.7%
September 1923	98,860,000.0	1019.7%
October 1923	25,260,208,000.0	12725.5%
November 15, 1923	4,200,000,000,000.0	16526.9%

Footnotes
12 E. Johnson, ed., The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. XVI: Activities 1914-19, The Treasury and Versailles, London � 1977, p. 382n cited in Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I, Basic Books, New York � 1999, p. 398
13 Adapted from table, Gordon A. Craig, Germany: 1866-1945, Oxford University Press, New York � 1978, p. 450

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