Stabilization Debates and Political Crises, August 1922–January 1923

Abstract The galloping inflation and the hyperinflation were having disastrous effects upon Germany’s society and polity. Both Rathenau and Wirth had predicted such a result if Germany were not granted some respite from Allied demands. It is impossible, therefore, not to take very literally the desperate appeal made by Wirth for Papal intervention on Germany’s behalf at the beginning of August 1922. He warned that Allied demands were creating conditions which were reducing the “Mittelstand to beggars” and could only lead to more political murder, desperation, and the kind of circumstances that had already devastated Russia. Wirth, “as the responsible director of German policy and as a faithful son of the Catholic Church,” pleaded that the Holy See intervene in what he called the “final hour” to prevent Allied measures of force from totally destroying the German economy and to call for a reduction of the demands made upon Germany to a “bearable measure” as well as for a “sufficient breathing space” within which Germany could restore its currency and finances.1