The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Chapter 4 examines the Treaty of Versailles’s key economic provisions. Keynes addresses the communication between the Big Four as well as their public statements, such as Woodrow Wilson’s address before the Congress in February 1918 and his speech in New York in September of that year. The economic details include the logistical organization of German trade, the status of its government-owned and private property, transportation methods (merchant fleet by sea, the river system, and others), as well as tariffs. The contested geographic areas in question include the Ruhr valley, Upper Silesia, and Saar—key industrial areas in Germany focused on coal, steel, and chemical production especially affected by the Treaty. Keynes underscores the unequal relationship between the victors and vanquished, in which the terms of the postwar peace were imposed on Germany unequivocally. These terms were to be based on Wilson’s addresses and his Fourteen Points. This chapter does not focus on the question of Germany’s reparations, which Keynes leaves for the following chapter.

Before World War I, the German economic system relied on foreign investments, its overseas colonies, trade within Europe and abroad, exports, heavy industry (especially iron and coal), and its transportation and tariffs.