Theo Balderston – författare

This is a succinct overview of the turbulent economic history of the Weimar Republic. Theo Balderston, an experienced teacher of economic history, summarises the wealth of recent research on the subject, and presents it in lucid, accessible form. He offers new perspectives on the economic effects of the Reparations conflict and of domestic political struggles for postwar inflation and the slump. Controversial analyses of the slow economic growth of even the Republic's best years have implications for the instability or otherwise of its political economy. Recent globalisation and global debt crises throw new light on the foreign debt burden with which Germans saddled themselves in the later 1920s, and the fateful financial crisis of 1931. Theo Balderston explains new analyses of the role of economic policy in worsening the slump and thus paving the way for Hitler.

The functioning of the gold standard has been at the heart of explanations of the interwar depression, particularly as a result of the research of Professors Barry Eichengreen and Peter Temin. In this volume, the interaction between the gold standard and the Great Depression in seven countries is examined by an international team of economists and economic historians. The editor's introduction critically evaluates the Eichengreen Temin thesis and Eichengreen and Temin themselves contribute an afterword.