Gustav Stresemann

He's a liberal, a liberal party kind of guy.

Gustav Stresemann.

And the mandate is to negotiate with France over the occupation and stabilize the mark.

uh so the ruling class uh brewery says decided to retreat from the edge of the abyss and the workers go back to work on august 15th satisfied that they've overthrown the government and maybe uh

On top of that, I agree with you that the Treaty of Versailles and the 1923 hyperinflation that destroyed Germany's middle class made it likely that the goal of any German leader would be to reverse the Treaty of Versailles.

But there were German leaders like Stresemann.

Of course, they tried to reverse the Treaty, but they tried to do it peacefully, not necessarily by war.

On top of that, you're right that there have been genocides that killed lots of people.

I mean, it is a much troubled But there are also moments of great prosperity as well.

And there are skillful interwar German politicians, I suppose most notably Gustav Stresemann, but whom events act against in his own mortality, of course, as well.

But I wonder if you could paint a picture of of that interwar period, post-Versailles, the problems with Versailles, the social relations in Germany at that point, and perhaps paths not followed.

There are lots of paths not followed or at least followed for a while and then they come to an end.

So yeah, I don't know, but the only plausible explanation is that they said, "Look, well, the only way that we will get out of paying reparations is if they realize that it'll destroy our financial system," which they did.

I had Katja Hoyer, the historian, on this show a while back, and she postulated that Gustav Stresemann was a, a kind of hero of the '20s.

His death was a great tragedy.

He's underrated.

It's c- uh, uh, there's, there are all a lot of the way through.

One of the most able statesmen in, um, in the, in the Weimar period in Germany, a man now almost forgotten, but was an extremely clever and able, um, man called Gustav Stresemann, who, who charted a, um, a path that, that got Germany out of, uh, uh, its pariah status into a respectable country again.

Um, it, after the, uh, incredible hyperinflation, he stabilized the currency.

He oversaw the golden period in, in, um, in Germany between 1924 and '29, um, where it was the fastest-growing, um, economy in Europe, receiving vast amounts of money and help from, from America, by the way.

'Cause that, if, if it seems to me that this were to ever happen again, it would be specifically because of the leadership conditions like it did under Weimar.

Um, I think it perhaps there were some great and significant leaders, and there were some impressive pe- uh, people.

Um, I, I picked Gus- Gustav Stresemann out particularly, but before that there were some.

Many of them have- were assassinated, um, which was another factor [laughs] that was go- that was a, a sig- a very, very significant factor in, in the history in, in, in, in, in Weimar.