masteroftheveiledthreat
Banned
If the UK and France had stood up to Hitler when he tried to militarize the Rhineland how would the Great Depression have ended?
If Britain and France manage to oust Hitler than it will improve their economies but will leave Germany in greater ruin than before. After Hitler is either captured/killed and largely discredited and humiliated as a leader, the Communist Party gets a stronger show of support. The Weimar Republic though probably survives for at least some time after amidst the tougher economic times.
Probably the same way the Depression ended in the U.S. after PH--the war would jumpstart their economies.
What makes you think there would be anything in that timeline resembling PH and WWII as they were IOTL?
If anything Germany would probably end up a serious basket case as the German far right and the Heer duke it out for control. The KPD had been pretty heavily purged by 1935 and the Weimar Republic was all but dead by 1933 due to three years of rule by emergency presidential decrees. No Hitler would have been a better outcome
understatement of the year
but odds are Germany would not revert to any kind of pre-1933 status quo; it would all depend on who could command the public's loyalty and make it stick.
This would also all be under the shadow of British/French intervention which would have its own major impact. Odds are German revanchism doesn't go away, it just gets delayed with even more fuel added to the fire.
If France does some aggressive shit during the Rhineland crisis, they default on their loans and declare bankruptcy, given the financial crisis they were going through at the time.
EDIT: Also, IIRC, Hitler had given orders for a retreat in case French troops so much as crossed the border. This means there is a chance he could get away scot-free by censoring/manipulating the news in Germany, while also bankrupting France in the process.
Given the situation, France would NOT do anything more than move troops into the Rhineland, so no marching on Berlin or anything.
Wo is "they," that defaults, France or Germany?
I think its likely Hitler would have been overthrown, or severely weakened.
France may consider it a victory just to make the German troops leave.
I suppose it was a good thing France didn't try it![]()
France's top military official, General Maurice Gamelin, informed the French government that the only way to remove the Germans from the Rhineland was to mobilize the French Army, which would not only be unpopular; it would also cost the French treasury 30 million francs per day.[40] Gamelin assumed a worst-case scenario in which a French move into the Rhineland would spark an all-out Franco-German war, a case which required full mobilization. Gamelin's analysis was supported by the War Minister, General Louis Maurin who told the Cabinet that it was inconceivable that France could reverse the German remilitarization without full mobilization.[41] At the same time, in late 1935-early 1936 France was gripped by a financial crisis, with the French Treasury informing the government that sufficient cash reserves to maintain the value of the franc as currently pegged by the gold standard in regard to the U.S. dollar and the British pound no longer existed, and only a huge foreign loan on the money markets of London and New York could prevent the value of the franc from experiencing a disastrous downfall.[42] Because France was on the verge of elections scheduled for the spring of 1936, devaluation of the franc, which was viewed as abhorrent by large sections of French public opinion, was rejected by the caretaker government of Premier Albert Sarraut as politically unacceptable.[42] Investor fears of a war with Germany were not conducive to raising the necessary loans to stabilize the franc: the German remilitarization of the Rhineland, by sparking fears of war, worsened the French economic crisis by causing a massive cash flow out of France as worried investors shifted their savings towards what was felt to be safer foreign markets.[43] On March 18, 1936 Wilfrid Baumgartner, the director of the Mouvement général des fonds (the French equivalent of a permanent under-secretary) reported to the government that France for all intents and purposes was bankrupt.[44] Only by desperate arm-twisting from the major French financial institutions did Baumgartner manage to obtain enough in the way of short-term loans to prevent France from defaulting on her debts and keeping the value of the franc from sliding too far, in March 1936.[44] Given the financial crisis, the French government feared that there were insufficient funds to cover the costs of mobilization, and that a full-blown war scare caused by mobilization would only exacerbate the financial crisis.[44]
It depends how successfully the New Deal progresses. Contrary to what your Libertarian or Conservative friends may tell you, every year of the New Deal the economy and employment situation made marked progress, except for one.
GDP increased, employment increased, etc. The year that is the exception was 1937, during which time FDR took the advice to cut back the New Deal spending and balance the budget, with an eye towards the deficit. The economy went back into a tailspin in reaction, and only returned to recovery with the return of the New Deal efforts.
The War would prove Keynesianism. Through massive output, deficits be damned, the nation was pulled to economic strength.
The New Deal would have done that, in domestic rather than military terms, but the issue is whether the New Deal would have continued in successful terms or have been chipped away at, with legislation held up by Conservatives in the Congress or killed by them or watered down by them, and with legislation and acts and organizations declared unconstitutional or partially declared unconstitutional by a Conservative Supreme Court, chipping at at its strength. Even if such a thing happened, leading to a realignment where New Dealers regained strength, that would still follow a period of years where the economy is mucked up; something that would prolong the Depression and would be a burden on the common American and on the nation.
If France does some aggressive shit during the Rhineland crisis, they default on their loans and declare bankruptcy, given the financial crisis they were going through at the time.
Didn't the French have one of the world's largest gold reserves during the Depression?
There was a a gold reserve in mid 1940, when France fell. I have heard that two warships transported gold bullion to a Toronto depository in March 1940, to serve as security for the purchases the French government was making in the US (including projected orders for 3,000+ aircraft). In June/July a small group of French warships at Martinique (including the aircraft transport Bearn) was the subject of British interest due to the gold bullion allegedly aboard. Finally there are claims the French (Vichy government) managed to move its gold reserve to the Dakar area sometime in late 1940.
The important point suggesting the existance of a gold reserve of some size is the French government was not seeking large scale loans in 1939-40 to fiance its war expenses. If the information I've seen is correct then the French gov. was not contemplating using loans to finance war costs until 1942 or perhaps late 1941.
How that fits into the French financial situation of 1936 I cant say. Perhaps gold reserves were not enough to prevent financial distress in 1936?