Criticisms and Negative Effects
John Maynard Keynes claimed that overall influence on the world economy of exacting reparations from Germany would have been disastrous.
Many observers hold that war reparations were an indirect, but major, cause of World War II. After the end of World War I, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles imposed heavy war reparations upon Germany. Some claim these reparations payments exacerbated German economic problems, and the resulting hyperinflation ruined the chances of the Weimar Republic with the public and allowed the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler. After the Franco-Prussian War, the amount of reparations was set at a fixed value. Moreover, the post–World War I amount was subject to frequent recalculations, which encouraged Germany to obstruct payments. Eventually, all payments were cancelled after Hitler rose to power.
The experience of the post–World War I reparations led to the post–World War II solution, where winning powers were supposed to take reparations in machines and movable goods from the defeated nations, as opposed to money. Moreover, policies like the Marshall Plan emphasized shared economic development of the Western European states (removing much of what critics saw as the incentives giving rise to World War I) rather than punishment of the former Axis powers.
Read more about this topic: War Reparations
Famous quotes containing the words negative effects, criticisms, negative and/or effects:
“The working woman may be quick to see any problems with children as her fault because she isn’t as available to them. However, the fact that she is employed is rarely central to the conflict. And overall, studies show, being employed doesn’t have negative effects on children; carefully done research consistently makes this clear.”
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“I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the system is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments ... but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness.”
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“A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Virtues are not emotions. Emotions are movements of appetite, virtues dispositions of appetite towards movement. Moreover emotions can be good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable; whereas virtues dispose us only to good. Emotions arise in the appetite and are brought into conformity with reason; virtues are effects of reason achieving themselves in reasonable movements of the appetites. Balanced emotions are virtue’s effect, not its substance.”
—Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)