Young Plan

6 Key excerpts on "Young Plan"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Elusive Quest

  America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919-1933

  • Melvyn P. Leffler(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • The University of North Carolina Press

    (Publisher)

  But since every mark was hotly contested by the creditors, Young had to allocate to the United States a smaller share of each German annuity than had been authorized by American officials. He also had to accept a much closer link between war debts and reparations than had been anticipated. As a result the Hoover administration decided to reserve judgment on the official American attitude toward the Young Plan. 43 Despite the suspicions of American officials, the Young Plan was neither a European plot to embroil the United States in Europe’s political affairs nor an effort to impose the financial burden of the war exclusively upon the United States. On the contrary the plan was a complex document that tried to accommodate the diverse economic and political imperatives of several nations. The Young Plan called for the payment of fifty-nine annuities, the last twenty-two coinciding with Allied debt payments. During the first thirty-seven years the average annuity was 20 percent below the standard Dawes Plan annuity, thus affording Germany substantial reductions in payments. In addition, Germany benefited, at least politically, from the termination of foreign controls over the budget, the railroads, and the Reichsbank. In return for these advantages Germany agreed to pay a part of each annuity, amounting to 660 million marks, unconditionally. France received 500 million marks of each unconditional payment, thus satisfying one of her primary objectives. All of Germany’s creditors received enough to cover their future war debt payments. But the Young Plan stipulated that, should the Allies secure reductions in their own obligations, a large percentage of those benefits would be passed on to Germany. Finally, the Young Plan provided for the establishment of the BIS. This institution was expected to distribute the reparation annuities, help finance deliveries-in-kind, facilitate international transfers, and promote world commerce

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  Belgium and Europe

  A Study in Small Power Diplomacy

  • Jonathan E. Helmreich(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Jaspar mediated vigorously, winning the appreciation of the delegates. Eventually the British demands were met, primarily at the expense of the Germans, who accepted the terms reluctantly. A second session of the conference was held the following January, at which the last technical matters were settled. By then, the Germans had accepted Belgium's measure of influence 301 the Young Plan in a national plebiscite (Dec. 22, 1929), despite the cam-paign of Adolf Hitler and Alfred Hugenberg against it. As it was finally established, the Young Plan required Germany to pay gradually increasing annuities for thirty-seven years which would average about 1,988,800,000 gold marks exclusive of the costs of serv-icing the Dawes Plan loan; from 1966 to 1988 payments would be some-what lower. Of these annuities, however, only 612 million marks were unconditionally payable; transfer of the remainder of any annuity could be postponed if this were warranted by the current economic conditions. The total sum Germany was to turn over was 113,907.7 million gold marks, of which Belgium would receive 16,948.8 million. Though the Belgians regained the 8 per cent share allotted them at Spa, as their prior-ity had, by now, been met, they had to agree that their part of the Young Plan payments would come out of the conditional portions of the annui-ties. Because Jaspar feared Germany might not ever make the conditional payments, he arranged with France that in such an event France would grant Belgium 6 per cent of the proceeds of the Young Plan loan to Germany in which Belgium herself was not participating. 79 The Young Plan was not enthusiastically greeted in Belgium, for the growing European depression indicated that the conditional payments would not be met. In 1931, the continuing economic collapse in both Europe and America caused U.S. President Herbert Hoover to call for a moratorium on all intergovernmental payments.

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  German Reparations, 1919 - 1932

  A Historical Survey

  • L. Gomes(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The final stage of the campaign was then a plebiscite or the popular vote of the German people calling for rejec- tion of the Young Plan and the ‘war guilt lie’. At the national ballot held on 22 December 1929, 5.8 million people expressed opposition to the Young Plan by voting in favour of the referendum. Whilst only 13.8 per cent of the total electorate backed the nationalists’ demands – far short of the number required to stop ratification (50 per cent or 21 million votes) – it was clear evidence of continuing German hostility to reparations and the Young Plan in particular. That was bound to raise doubts about German good faith in honouring future reparation com- mitments. With effective sanctions gone, reparation creditors were left with only German goodwill as guarantor of the Young payments. With the defeat of the plebiscite, ratification of the Young Plan pro- ceeded when, after a stormy debate, the Reichstag finally approved it by a vote of 265 to 192 on 11 March 1930, followed by President von Hindenburg’s formal assent two days later. Ominously, the anti-Young campaign catapulted the Nazis into national prominence. Hitler and his party became household names throughout the Reich. Before that, they were a relatively small but noisy party based in Bavaria. Less than a year From Dawes to Young 179 later at the Reichstag elections of September 1930 the Nazis, acquiring newly found legitimacy among the electorate, increased their represen- tation from 12 to 107 seats (winning 6.4 million votes or 18.7 per cent of the popular vote) becoming the second largest party – after the Social Democrats (SPD). Young Plan stalled The BIS, based in Basel (Switzerland), opened its doors for business on 17 May 1930. Before that date the Bank’s management team opened negotiations with the financial authorities and issuing houses in nine different countries for the floatation of the Young Loan.

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  Historical Phases of the New York Herald-Tribune

  Facets of a Multiple Pulitzer Prize-Winning Newspaper

  • Heinz-Dietrich Fischer(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • LIT Verlag

    (Publisher)

  All three, chairmen and spokesmen for their delegations, are united in declaring that the bank should inaugurate a new era of international cooperation and peace and are unqualified in their opinion that it will mark a great forward step in world financial and business relations. These three experts command attention the world over by their names alone: Sir Josiah Stamp, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht and Emile Francqui. British, German and Belgian, they represent most widely opposed views within the Young committee. An indication of the importance they attach to the Young Plan is clearly given in Dr. Schacht’s written statement which follows: „The Paris reparations conference had to deal with a formidable task. It had to achieve an economic settlement of the war at a moment when numerous postwar 40 German Hjalmar Schacht (left) and American Owen D. Young 41 political problems still remain unsolved. This situation is chiefly responsible for the long duration of the reparations conference. One should feel great obligations to its members for not having lost patience in the face of these conditions and for always having striven to find new solutions and finally for having succeeded in discovering them. With a degree of patience which often threatened to overcome spiritual and corporeal resistance, Mr. Young has been able to lead the conference to a result which certainly satisfied completely none of the groups attending the conference and which certainly means for the German group a financial burden of unheard of weight and of yet unexperienced duration. „One can say, however, that the mere fact that the agreement has been reached is in itself proof of revived stimulation for the future economic development, which will play a foremost role in the success of the arrangement arrived at. It is not yet time to express one’s mind on the details of the plan.

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  American Business and Foreign Policy

  1920–1933

  • Joan Hoff Wilson(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • The University Press of Kentucky

    (Publisher)

  Uniting as they had been unable to do over the question of Allied debts, these businessmen argued that both plans scaled down the reparation payments to Germany’s postwar capacity to pay. Thomas Lamont went so far as to call the international loan accompanying the Young Plan “the final liquidation of the War so far as the settlement of great economic questions is concerned.” There was also a consensus among business internationalists that the two commissions represented a “new practical idealism” in the conduct of foreign affairs whereby the “old diplomatic method of international dealing” between politicians had been replaced with unofficial conferences conducted by businessmen acting as private citizens. The business community and public in general accepted these positive generalizations about the Dawes and Young settlements without any real understanding of the technicalities involved. One such technicality was the fact that, despite the predominance of economic expertise in the negotiations, both were political adjustments of the reparations question based on large loans to Germany which were not self-liquidating. This meant that in the long run they exacerbated the balance-of-payments problem for the lending countries, especially England, as well as for Germany. 58 This blind support from within the business community undermined any practical consideration of alternative solutions and prevented most legitimate criticism of the plans from enlightening public opinion on the entire question of reparations and their relation to the war debts. The American Association Favoring Reconsideration of the War Debts did devote considerable effort to a critique of the operation of the Dawes Plan in 1927, but aside from Newton D. Baker, George W. Wickersham, and Henry B. Joy, former president of the Packard Motor Company, few prominent politicians or business figures aided the efforts of this organization

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  Britain and the Threat to Stability in Europe, 1918-45

  • Peter Catterall, Kate Utting(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  In France it prompted Briand to think harder about providing a similar lead for Europe. 13 Briand's other main motive was to tie Germany into a peaceful European structure before the ever-present danger of nationalism again arose to rule it out and revive the Franco-German antagonism. Briand was about to represent France at the forthcoming Hague Conference where he intended both to accept Britain's call for the early withdrawal of all Allied troops from the Rhineland, and to approve the new reparations settlement, the Young Plan, which had been negotiated in Paris in the spring. The French were attracted to the Young Plan by the promise of guaranteed reparation payments, which would underpin their domestic financial stability and remove the need for higher taxes. The element of guarantee would be provided by Germany's commitment to make payments unconditionally on a specified part of the reparations total. The French intended to issue bonds against this commitment on the international markets, thereby obtaining immediate pay-ment of the claim while also tying Germany's credit-worthiness to its willingness to continue reparations payments. This removed a major reason for continuing to station troops on German soil. But, as the French were aware, even the best laid plans could go wrong, and they were nervous about agreeing to withdraw the last of their troops from the Rhineland five years before being required to do so by the Treaty of Versailles, since this meant the abandonment of an important means of containing Germany. Briand therefore turned to European federation as a new means of containment. As sketched out in the Memorandum that he circulated to interested governments on 17 May 1930, Europe would create institutions modelled on the structure of the League of Nations, with a Secretariat, an Assembly and a Council.

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