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German Economic History 1870- 1990 Coursework PLEASE SAVE ME FROM MENTAL BREAKDOWN

So, I've been doing this coursework for the past few months and I think I'm close to mental and physical collapse because I put hours of work into it for her to mark and she writes like one note at the end like "needs more work". So can somebody please save me from this hell and tell me if my current efforts for it seem ok?

Towhat extent did West Germanyachieve an economic miracle in the context of German history from c1870-1990?Wirtschaftswunder (which translatesto economic miracle in German) otherwise known as The Miracle of the Rhine wasa popular term used by economists and historians alike to describe the periodof rapid economic development that took place following the collapse of theThird Reich in 1945. While West Germany undoubtedly experienced someeconomic development, it is disputed by many economists whether it can beconsidered a true miracle. Germany across it’s long history had always beensusceptible to the whims of the economy, experiencing peaks of prosperity suchas the golden years and troughs of despair such as WWI; it was this eventhowever that brought Germany into the modern age and revolutionised the Germaneconomy from it’s war-torn state by the end of the second world war into theeconomic super power it is today. Following the fall of the Third Reich, Germany was left in a state ofdisarray with the majority of inner city living spacedestroyed by Allied bombing and the country in ruins with little sympathy fromthe countries who had suffered under the Nazi war machine. The historianChris Knowles remarks that “66% of houses in Cologne were destroyed and 93% wereuninhabitable in Düsseldorf.” and that “the economy was at a standstill and nocentral government remained to implement instructions issued by the Allies.” Generallyspeaking, his assessment is correct as Germany was left in a cataclysmicsituation in the late 1940’s, with a 5th of its 50 millionpopulation living as refugees, food production per capita in 1947 only 51 percentof its level in 1938 and industrial output in 1947 only one third of it’s 1938level.[1] However while it was certainly true thatWest Germany faced many dire problems such as unemployment being at 8.1% andfood prices and starvation rising drastically with many people resorting togrowing their own food, it is not an entirely accurate view as 80-85%[2]of the production capacity remained intact and despite Allied confiscation ofGerman patents and human capital the physical infrastructure was only punctuallydestroyed meaning economic downfall could be avoided. There is some debate amongst historians and economists on whether West Germanytruly experienced an economic miracle, it can be argued for instance thatalthough there was a façade of chaos and destruction that underneath there wasan industrial capital stock considerably larger than even before the war. Thecombination of wartime investment and destruction had in a way benefited Germanyand to a far higher degree than any of the other countries who had fought inthe war. One of the main arguments suggesting that the Wirtschaftswunder wasover exaggerated is the fact that despite being argued to be brought about bysocial consensus and agreement, economic meetings were “largely ceremonial andinformational, too short, too infrequent, held only two or three times a year,too unwieldy and too understaffed”[3].Such meetings have been argued to be of little significance to economicmanagement in the FRG and amounted to little beyond the question of wages. [4]Despite such arguments and although opinions differon the extent of the Wirtschaftswunder, the economic development that occurredin West Germany was undeniable and the FRG undoubtedly experienced prosperityto at least some extent as between 1950 and 1959, GDP rose by nearly 8 percentper annum, faster than anywhere else in Europe and in stark contrast toexperiences following World War I. Among European countries, only Austria, which shared many circumstances with Germany, came close to matching such performanceas Germany’srapid growth doubled living standards in a decade. It’s also significant that thepurchasing power of wages made an increase by 73% from 1950 to 1960. Not onlywas the physical infrastructure in place for an economic revival but there wasalso a strong and capable workforce, added to by the exodus of over 1,600,000migrants [5]aspart of the Soviet “brain drain” which led to the share of employment inindustries rise to an average of 48.9% between 1950 and 1972. There was now amuch larger and more competitive market with the introduction of a newundervalued currency and an increase in German exports such as the exporting ofarmaments to help in the Korean war which led to the value of exports growingfrom 10% to 19% of GDP in the 1950’s and 1960’s which in the words of HistorianW. Johnston[6] wouldserve as the “first step towards recovery”. Such a historical economic upturn was likely not the result ofserendipitous luck and fortune alone and there are no shortage of attempts toexplain it. While the economic status of the west side of Germany itself wasn’tin such a bleak state as the East by the end of the war, it was only marginallybetter and most historians agree that it was the actions of the Western Alliedpowers that was most significant in it’s financial rebirth. To begin with, theWestern powers were reluctant to assist in the reconstruction of the Germaneconomy, but upon realising that a suppression of the German economy meant asuppression of their own and indeed for the economies of the rest of Europe,the U.S decided to extend the Marshall Plan (a system of monetary aid) toassist Germany in it’s recovery. There were a number of preconditions thatallowed such a recovery to take place however. For example, the economicprecondition of the idea of a Social market economy, as popularised by theGerman economist Muller- Armack in 1947 and the introduction of the DeutscheMark in 1948 was a highly significant factor in German recovery. The concept ofa social market economy in Germanywas not entirely new as it was the founder of Germany,Chancellor Otto von Bismarck who had helped combat the economic turmoil of Prussiaand stabilize the empire by creating the basis for the social insurance economythat Muller-Armack describes.[7].The governmental basis for the economic miracle occurred with the foundation ofthe Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 with the infrastructure in a process ofrestoration and with limited dismantling of German assets by the Western Allies;events were very much in the favour of the German economy. One of the main reasons for the Wirtschaftswunder wasthe Marshall Plan. The announcement ofthe Marshall Plan in 1947 marked the turning point in US attitudes to Germanrecovery and began to lower the uncertainty about the political and economicfuture of the country as the USinvested 13.3 billion across 4 years for the European recovery, with a vastmajority of it going forward to Germanyspecifically.The Marshall Plan mirrors the Dawes Plan, a similarsystem of financial aid in a number of ways. Both plans were implemented aftera time of great financial difficulty and helped the effort for financialrecovery via aid from foreign powers (in both cases the United States). The Dawes Plan notonly made a payment of 1 billion marks until 1929 and 2.5 million thereafterbut also helped to reorganise the Reichsbank. This aid was of greatsignificance in the rejuvenation of Germany’seconomic base as it marked a turning point for Germany after the devastatingdefeat of the First World War. The comparison between the two periods goesbeyond the links between the Dawes and MarshallPlan however. Both the economic revivals of the Golden Years and theWirtschaftswunder were greatly benefited by the American aid they received but werealso gifted in that they had strong economists to architect the direction ofeconomic policy in Chancellor Stresemann of the Weimar Republicand the Economic minister Ludwig Erhard of the FRG.One of Erhard’s most bold decisions was theabolishment of Allied price controls in 1948 despite the stiff opposition fromhis colleagues; Erhard was particularly intuitive in this as he decided to doit on a Sunday as the offices of America and Britain would be closed andtherefore unable to countermand it. Hispolicies with some hesitation came to become widely popular during the 1950’sas coupled with the introduction of the deutsche mark and the social marketeconomy, (balancing free trade with a welfare state) he would bring about rapidgrowth and prosperity across West Germany, simultaneously overcoming the shadow leftby the Second World War and integrating the influx of refugees from the eastsuccessfully into the state. The introduction of the deutsche mark was anattempt to counter the hyperinflation of West Germany and the growth of theblack market of western goods were many people had begun to use Americancigarettes as currency. While this angered the Soviet Union who swiftly decidedto disconnect themselves from West Germanyby cutting off roads and trade links, West Germany was likely benefited as the subsequent airlift offood and coal by the Allied powers helped distribute Erhard’s new currencyacross West Berlin. The new currency helpedwipe out 90% [8]of thegovernment’s private debt and savings and is seen as a great modernising factorin our perception of post war Germany and yet at the time, it was not met withsuch tribulation as although the emergence of consumer goods meant a greatimprovement in the economy, the average German whose wages were fixed at a setlevel, it was unaffordable, leading to a wave of strikes in the late 1940’sthat only ended after the freezing of wages had stopped. [9]Similar changes took place under the economic wisdomof Gustav Stresemann who after increasing inflation and economic uncertaintyintroduced the new currency of the rentenmark which with the assistance of theDawes plan brought about an age of prosperity that was unprecedented in Germanhistory. The precedent for such a currency change came from massivehyperinflation, it was for this reason that the rentenmark was valued at 1rentenmark to one trillion old marks [10]meaning that worth was put back into the currency system and inflationsubsequently ceased to be a problem. Stresemann was also enlightened inrestoring one of the main aspects needed for economic recovery, pride. He didthis through the stability brought by the Treaty of Locarno which was a nonaggression pact which brought about talks of German inclusion in the League ofNations and brought Germanyback into the international community. Stresemann declared “we have our placeat the table back”, however his success would not last as long as theWirtschaftswunder and while policies such as the Young Plan helped reducereparations by 2 billion over 59 years, Stresemann himself knew that thereliance on American aid would only spell disaster in the long run when hefamously declared ominously nearing his death that “the German economy is onlydoing well on the surface. Germanyup front is dancing on a volcano” which would be the case with the Wall StreetCrash in 1929 which crippled the German economy once more. Another instance of German economic recovery wasengineered by Schacht who helped repair the Nazi economy following thedepression and economic desolation caused by the Wall Street Crash in 1929. Whilethe general perception of the rise of the Nazis is that they made use ofalready existing anti Semitic tensions, this for the most part was not true asanti Semitism existed to a far higher degree in places such as the Soviet Union. For the most part, the popularity of theNazis came simply from the economic advantages they would bring; one Germanworker in particular has been quoted saying “'I was unemployed for many years. I'd have made a pact with thedevil to get work. Hitler came alongand got me work, so I followed him”. This was true for most Germans as despitethe horror that was to come; the Nazis supplied work to thousands and brought Germany out of itseconomic depression which had brought about the unemployment of over 6 millionpeople.Schacht helpedbring about this economic stability through an economic recovery programme thatwould come to be known as the Four Year Plan.
[1]http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GermanEconomicMiracle.html[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRPs-YqUGqQ[3]The Great Economic Debate: Failed Economics and a Future for Canada- Cy Gonrick [4]http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/econ_articles/ucla/ucla_marshall2.html[5]Germany-Hope, Terror and Revival 1858-1990- Alison Kitson[6]Erhard, Ludwig, and W. Johnston, Germany’sComeback in the World Market: The German ‘Miracle’ Explained by the BonnMinister for Economics’, Routledge, 2004. [7]http://www.gtai.de/GTAI/Navigation/EN/Meta/Press/Markets/Markets-germany/markets-germany-online-plus,t=the-social-market-economy-of-germany-as-a-top-export,did=886202.html[8]Historyof Modern Germanysince 1815, Tipton, Frank B [9]http://www.shadowstats.com/article/hyperinflation-2010[10]http://gcsehistory.org.uk/modernworld/germany/goldeneraofweimargermany.htm {�t W�
I highly recommend you don't post your coursework here!

Exam boards use a software to check for plagiarism and this site would be detected, which results in the disqualification of your exams from that exam board.

Please remove this ASAP.
Original post by MajorTom98
x


Original post by undercxver
x.


looks likes it's been copied from wikipedia xD
Original post by thefatone
looks likes it's been copied from wikipedia xD


:rofl: I know.

I had a student copy paragraphs from Wikipedia for his coursework. He didn't even get caught. :lolwut:
Original post by undercxver
:rofl: I know.

I had a student copy paragraphs from Wikipedia for his coursework. He didn't even get caught. :lolwut:


uummmmm wat
Original post by thefatone
uummmmm wat


Maybe he did because everyone's grade was lowered?

Or that could be due to poor marking from my teacher? :colonhash:
Original post by undercxver
Maybe he did because everyone's grade was lowered?

Or that could be due to poor marking from my teacher? :colonhash:


oh that's fair enough of course it's reasonable to copy of wikipedia to test whether the teachers marking is bad or expectations too high etc if everyone in class is getting bad grades

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