World News and Trends- Echoes of an old German nightmare: The Weimar Republic
Niall Ferguson, professor of political and financial history at Oxford University, set out a chilling scenario in Britain's Sunday Times.
His opening words were: "As Chancellor [Gerhard] Schröder grapples with a seriously sick economy, he is making the same mistakes which led to the 1930s crisis that opened the door for Hitler."
Just how bad are Berlin's economic woes? In the last decade only Switzerland and Japan had poorer performing economies in the developed world. German unemployment is 8.3 percent in the workforce and predicted to reach one in 10.As an overall assessment The World in 2003[published by The Economist] said: "Germany, once the country of the post-war economic miracle, is acquiring a reputation as the sick man of Europe,with low growth,high unemployment and an unwillingness to contemplate the sort of changes that might get it out of its current difficulties."
Comparisons with the old financially disastrous Weimar Republic are rife in the British and European media."Hidden jobless[ness] takes Germany back to the level of the Weimar era,"wrote Tony Paterson for The Sunday Telegraph. He reported that "public fury has spilled into the streets of Berlin with demonstrations of health workers, teachers, builders and lorry [truck] drivers."
Bild (a German newspaper) ran a simple headline, "We've Had Enough,"expressing the frayed emotions of the unemployed. Part of the problem is high wages. Actually,"Britain's hourly labour costs are 30 percent lower than they are in Germany" (The World in 2003).
The Guardian's correspondent in Berlin reported that the "German tax rise evokes Weimar comparison." Another Guardian headline tells us that "Europe's most powerful banking sector is on red alert—German money machine grinds to a halt." The Mail on Sunday also calls Germany the "sick man of Europe"—talking of "debts, dole queues [welfare waiting lines] and industry in crisis."
In reality, conditions are nowhere near as bad as the skyrocketing inflation that plagued the Weimar Republic in the late '20s and early '30s when the proverbial wheelbarrow full of marks would not so much as buy a pound of butter. Nonetheless, the German economy bears close watching. Totalitarianism in the form of Hitler's Third Reich emerged out of economic frustrations. (Sources: The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The World in 2003, The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday [all London].)
An Article from:
Good News Magazine: January - February 2003
Course Content
John Ross Schroeder
John died on March 8, 2014, in Oxford, England, four days after suffering cardiac arrest while returning home from a press event in London. John was 77 and still going strong.
Some of John's work for The Good News appeared under his byline, but much didn't. He wrote more than a thousand articles over the years, but also wrote the Questions and Answers section of the magazine, compiled our Letters From Our Readers, and wrote many of the items in the Current Events and Trends section. He also contributed greatly to a number of our study guides and Bible Study Course lessons. His writing has touched the lives of literally millions of people over the years.
John traveled widely over the years as an accredited journalist, especially in Europe. His knowledge of European and Middle East history added a great deal to his articles on history and Bible prophecy.
In his later years he also pastored congregations in Northern Ireland and East Sussex, and that experience added another dimension to his writing. He and his wife Jan were an effective team in our British Isles office near their home.
John was a humble servant who dedicated his life to sharing the gospel—the good news—of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to all the world, and his work was known to readers in nearly every country of the world.
