Make no mistake. Even today, more than a century on, this story will not fail to move new readers, giving many of them strong pause for thought, especially in those parts of the ‘civilised’ world where the barbarous and blundering practice of slaughtering our fellow-citizens is still carried out.
Andreyev’s ill-starred individuals accurately prefigured the real-life assassins of 1914.
.. Of course, Ilić drew from Andreyev’s tale the opposite conclusion from nearly everyone else’s.
Instead of condemning the young activists for their naïve and immoral conduct, he was won over by their idealism, selfless sincerity and courage.
.. Thus did Ilić become the mainspring of the whole enterprise, drawing all his inspiration from Russian literature. You can be sure that he would also have (mis)read Dostoyevsky’s Devils (1872).
.. A riveting narrative, with several characters and scenes indelible from memory, it proves painfully suspenseful despite our foreknowledge of the ending, losing none of its power to move readers as a story in itself while incidentally arguing against capital punishment.
How much did Germany pay in total, as reparation for WWI, in the last 92 years?
20.6 billion marks, which was about 40% of what the Allies had originally expected them to pay.
To put that number into context, the German government had borrowed somewhere between 110 and 150 billion marks between 1914 and 1918 to finance its war effort. They had planned to impose a massive war indemnity on Britain and France after victory in order to recover that money. Instead, they found that they were the ones expected to pay reparations, while still owing their creditors the 12-figure sum they’d just borrowed. It was this, rather than reparations alone, that led to Germany’s financial difficulties in the early 1920s.
The loser being forced to hand over money to the winner was a well-established custom of war. In 1871, Germany had demanded 5 billion francs from a defeated France, as well as annexing the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine.
.. The French were not only interested in compensation; they also hoped that laying a heavy, long-term indemnity payment on Germany would make it impossible for Germany to raise a new army and come back for revenge in a few years’ time.
.. Germany was obliged to pay 50 billion marks, at a rate (agreed in 1923) of 2.5 billion per year. However, rather than raise taxes to cover the payments, they borrowed the money, mostly from the United States.
In short, during the 1920s a financial merry-go-round was in operation. US bankers lent money to Germany. The German government used that money to pay reparations to Britain and France. The British and French used that money to repay their war loans to the US bankers. The US banks made huge profits, and lent even more money to Germany. Everything was going well, until the bubble burst.
..However, these payments were not reparations; they didn’t go to the victims of the war. They went to the banks which had lent money to Weimar Germany in the 1920s.
Dadism and World War I
Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war ..
.. Some theorists argue that Dada was actually the beginning of postmodern art.
What kind of peace would Germany have imposed on France had it won in 1918 in WW1?
Direct annexations were to be kept to a minimum, since the politicians didn’t want to make millions of non-German speakers into citizens of the Reich. Instead, the idea was to set up vassal states on Germany’s borders.
These would be nominally independent, but allied to Germany – with German troops stationed in their territory and controlling their fortresses and strategic railways. Likewise their economies would be subject to German supervision, with German control over their tariffs and customs policy. This was the fate that awaited Belgium, Poland and the Baltic States after the war, had the Germans won. France, however, was considered too large to be subjugated in this way.
Instead, France would be forced to pay a huge war indemnity. The amount contemplated should be large enough to pay off Germany’s entire national debt, and leave France economically weakened and unable to afford to maintain an army for several decades to come.
.. Germany also envisaged making colonial gains, but here their eyes were set on the Belgian Congo as the main prize to be acquired. Not only was it believed to be wealthy, but its possession would link up the existing German colonies in Kamerun, Ostafrika and Südwest Afrika.