My Amazon Review of Volker Ullrich's "Germany 1923: Hyper Inflation, Hitler's Putsch and...."

 Weimar’s Trial by Fire

I previously reviewed Volker Ullrich’s two volume biography of Adolf Hitler. ( See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Volker Ullrich's "Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939" and Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Volker Ullrich's "Hitler: Downfall, 1939-1945 )                                      Here the distinguished German historian focuses in on the critical year of 1923 which almost brought with it the premature death of the then five-year year-old Weimar Republic. His hero is the grand coalition prime minister, Gustav Stresemann, who manages to hold it together long enough so that the nascent republic survives its first trial by fire. It won’t be so lucky the next time.

 

What Stresemann faces is a hyper inflation that brings the Mark’s valuation down to 4.2 trillion to the dollar, the French occupation of the Ruhr for nonpayment of reparations, the Hitler Putsch in Munich, and a communist rising ordered by the Comintern in Moscow in Saxony, Thuringia, and Hamburg.  If this weren’t enough a separatist movement arose in the Rhine Valley where one of the leading figures was Cologne mayor Konrad Adenauer. As Keynes noted in his “Economic Consequences of the Peace,”  

       “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

 

Indeed, it was this inflation that destroyed the relationship between debtors and creditors, wiped out middle-class savings and immiserated huge swaths of the hitherto prosperous middle-class. Although not fatal at the time, when hard times returned to Germany in 1930, it happened with a vengeance.

 

Yet through it all, with all of its inherent faults, parliamentary democracy survived in Germany. By the end of the year the introduction of the Rentenmark, stabilized the currency which created the precondition for a substantial economic recovery in the late 1920’s. Working very effectively behind the scenes was U.S. Ambassador Alanson Houghton who worked tirelessly with Stresemann to get German acceptance of what was to become the Dawes Plan that enabled American loans to Germany. Later when American credit dried up, the roof fell in.

 

All the while Germany was in political and economic crisis the arts were flourishing. Germany became the second largest producer of motion pictures with such luminaries as Emil Jennings, Fritz Lang, and Conrad Veidt. Veidt would go on to play Major Heinrich Strasser in “Casablanca.” There was also the artist George Grosz, the playwright Bertolt Brecht and the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius.

 

Underneath it was a far right that never accepted democracy, industrialists who sought to undo the labor reforms of 1918, a judicial system that punished the Left far mor more severely than the Right.  Through it all Stresemann, originally a man of the Right, ended up being one of Weimar’s biggest supporters and by 1925, as foreign minister, he negotiated the Locarno Treaty with France confirming Germany’s western borders.

 

After reading this book I became more optimistic about the future of America. If the fledgling Weimar democracy could survive the challenges discussed above, certainly the 250-year-old democracy of the United States can survive our current dyspepsia. Germany faced far worse and came through it.

For the full Amazon URL see: Weimar's Trial by Fire (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Gary Sernovitz's "The Counting House"

 An Endowment CIO under Stress

 

Private equity investor Gary Sernovitz has written a disappointing novel about the trials and tribulations of college endowment chief investment officer. (CIO) The idea for the book, which focuses on the stresses and strains of a CIO as he goes through a year of underperformance. The book excels when it discusses how endowment investments are made and it demonstrates the folly of having 60 separate investment managers to run a $6 billion portfolio. We witness meetings with promoters of every endowment investing fad of the past two decades. All of this is interesting to a finance geek like me.

 

However, this is a novel. The characters are one dimensional. We really don’t get to know the CIO, the college president, and the head of the academic senate with his zany social investing ideas. We hardly get to know his small staff who has to put up with the CIO destroying his laptop computer in a fit of rage.

 

There is also a reclusive hedge fund billionaire alum who refuses to give money to the school. Given the characters in the book, who would give them money and given what is going on today at many elite colleges, it makes no sense to give money to any of them. The billionaire’s role in the book is to highlight the absurdity of the fee driven asset management industry to come up with niche products, that at the end of the day, likely detracts from investment performance.

 

My suggestion is that the book would have been better as nonfiction than fiction.

For the full amazon URL see: An Endowment CIO under Stress (amazon.com)

Joe "No Win" Biden

President Biden has done it again. He doesn’t believe in winning. Just as at the start of the Russia-Ukraine War when the Biden provided enough aid to prevent Ukraine’s defeat, but not enough for Ukraine to win, it now appears he is doing the same thing with respect to the Israel-Hamas War. Last night he announced on CNN that the U.S. will stop the shipments of offensive military aid to Israel should it invade the heart of the Hamas stronghold of Rafah. He also has suspended the shipment of 3500 bombs and thousands of artillery shells.

 

To be sure civilian casualties have been high in the Gaza War, but it is in the nature of the Hamas enemy who cares little about the death of its own people. To them every casualty makes Israel look bad in the eyes of the world. Thus, it is in their interests to increase the body count. When facing an enemy like this, what choice does Israel have?

 

If Biden thinks that will hasten the cease fire negotiations with Hamas, he is sorely mistaken. Hamas will continue to play its waiting game in the hopes that Israel will cave under U.S. pressure. Meantime more Israeli hostages will die in captivity, and it will likely make Hezbollah more aggressive in the north. Remember those bombs and artillery shells are needed to defend Israel in the north.

 

All Biden’s actions will do is to prolong the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The quicker Hamas is defeated in Gaza the quicker the war will end. Never forget that Hamas is the aggressor. ( See: Shulmaven: Hamas Aggression Must be Punished ) A partial arms embargo on Israel is perhaps one of the most counter-productive things Biden has done. Selling out an ally does not do Biden proud and his action will have consequences around the world, especially in Taiwan.

My Amazon Review of Kevin Baker's "The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City"

Play Ball

As a kid growing up in 1950’s Queens, I was totally immersed in baseball, especially the Brooklyn Dodgers. Kevin Baker has written a marvelous history of the game against the backdrop of a growing New York City. He starts out by refuting the idea that Abner Doubleday invented baseball. Indeed, it was invented as a street game in 1840’s New York and grew from there.

 

Though interesting the history of the early game didn’t hold a candle to what came in the early 1900’s. His description of the early New York Giants with its great manager John McGraw and its great pitcher Christy Mathewson is fantastic. McGraw’s teams dominated the game for two decades. All the while New York City was exploding with dynamism by building subways, the Hudson Tubes (now PATH), East River bridges, Penn Station, and Grand Central Station.

 

Of course, all of this development was under the aegis of Tammany Hall with all of the corruption that entailed. In the siting of all three New York ball parks, Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field and Yankee Stadium the fingerprints of Tammany Hall were present. Baker highlights the role of Tammany’s Big Tim Sullivan, the vice-lord of lower Manhattan. However, he fails to discuss the role of his boss, Charles Murphy, the chief sachem of Tammany Hall with no explanation given.

 

Although the White Sox were located in Chicago, the big fix of the 1919 World Series originated in New York under the auspices of Arnold Rothstein. In the early days of baseball corruption was more than casual.

 

As we go into the 1920’s the Yankees catch fire with the arrival of Babe Ruth. In the celebrity culture of the 1920’s Ruth was one of the greats, blasting home runs in every major league ballpark. The 1927 Yankees with Ruth backed up by Lou Gehrig, was perhaps the greatest team ever. Rivaling the 1920’s Yankee team was the late 1930’s Yankee team that feature jolting Joe DiMaggio who brought joy to Great Depression New York.

 

There is little discussion of the Dodgers until the Brooklyn Trust takes over the team and installs new management in 1938. From there on the Dodgers become a dynasty especially after luring away Branch Rickey from the St. Louis Cardinals to become its general manager.

Baker highlights the Jim Crow rules of baseball that kept African American players off the field. He discusses the great stars of the Negro Leagues who would have had fantastic careers in the major leagues. Unfortunately, that won’t be remedied until 1947 with the arrival of Jackie Robinson. Baseball and New York post-1945 will be the subject of volume two.

 

There is also a very important business lesson to be learned from the book. The Yankee’s Jacob Rupert continually reinvested in the team, built a farm system, and heavily invested in scouting for new players. Branch Rickey did the same thing at St. Louis and brought that magic to Brooklyn. Rickey signed players in the early 1940’s knowing that they would be drafted. Yet when the war ended, they would become the core of the new Brooklyn Dodgers. In contrast the Stonham family who ran the Giants failed to invest in the team, despite having great players like Carl Hubbell and Mel Ott, to regain their successes of the early 1900’s.

 

Kevin Baker’s history is lively and keeps the reader engaged. If I had one bone to pick, I would have displayed the annual statistics of the key players he discussed. Perhaps in volume two he will do that. 

For the full amazon URL see: Play Ball (amazon.com)

The Coming Debacle at the Democratic Convention

 On August 19^th, the Democrats will hold their national convention at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. The venue is the home to the NBA Chicago Bulls and the NHL Chicago Blackhawks. However, instead of basketball and ice hockey, we are likely to see a 21^st century version of the 1968 Democratic Convention where a violent confrontation between the Chicago police and New Left demonstrators doomed the election of Hubert Humphrey from the get-go.

 

Karl Marx wrote, “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” This time, I fear history will repeat as tragedy. Why? The growing anti-Israel protest movement will likely show up in force in Chicago. Within that group there are many violent elements, and it would not surprise me to see provocateurs among them who will seek to exploit the situation. Don’t be surprised to see more than a few “Death to America” shouts and signs.

 

Unlike 1968 Chicago Mayor Daly was in charge of a strong police force, today Chicago has a weak leftist mayor in Brandon Johnson and a demoralized police force. I fear that this combination will over-learn the lesson of 1968 where the police overreacted to the demonstrators by clubbing them on national television. My guess is that this time the police will underreact in such a manner that they will lose control of the situation enabling the demonstrators to enter the convention floor with a round of mayhem that will draw parallels to January 6^th.

 

Americans watching all of this play out on TV will come to the obvious conclusion that the children of America’s most privileged are out of control. Indeed, they watch them acting out every night from a host of elite college campuses. And it won’t take a political genius to link them to President Biden and the elites of the Democratic Party. I fear that Biden is trapped making the way open for Donald Trump.

My Amazon Review of Rachel Chrastil's "Bismarck's War:....:

Organization vs. Incompetence

 

I was disappointed in reading Xavier history professor Rachel Chrastil’s history of the Franco-Prussian War. To be sure it is very detailed, and it included many personal vignettes, it leaves out much. In describing battles, she leaves out maps denoting the positioning of the forces and while included in the text, there should have been detailed exhibits consisting of the Tables of Organization and Equipment of the respective forces. I would have also liked to see some discussion in the economic sinews of war of both France and Prussia.

 

After tricking Napoleon III into declaring war against Prussia via the infamous Ems dispatch in July 1870, Prussia wipes France on September 2 at the Battle of Sedan. Napoleon III is captured and immediately a republic is declared in France. The war should have ended then and there, but France fights on for another year bringing with concomitant carnage on both sides. Chrastil rightly attributes Prussia’s victory to superior organization and generalship led by Helmut von Moltke over France’s incompetence.

 

To me it would have been a far better read if she spent more time on the big picture rather than the minute details of the battle. However, one detail did stand out to me. Coralie Cahen, a Jewish woman, helped organize the care for the French wounded and became the Florence Nightingale of the war. Who knew?

 

Europe learned the wrong lesson from the war. Instead of being fearful of mass carnage, the continent began arming to the teeth that would reach its zenith in 1914. 

For the full amazon URL see: Organization vs. Incompetence (amazon.com)

The House Gets it Right, at Last.

Yesterday under the leadership of House Speaker Michael Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the House of Representatives passed the $95 billion foreign aid supplemental that will send needed military supplies to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. (See: Shulmaven: Israel, Iran and the Nazi Gaza War Protesters ) And for good measure the House threw in a forced sale/ban on Tick Tock. 

The leadership succeeded in overcoming challenges from the anti-Israel Hamas Caucus in the Democratic Party and the Putinista Wrecker Caucus apparently being led by Moscow Marjorie Taylor Green in the Republican Party. At last, the center finally held. The measure now moves on to the Senate where it will hopefully pass on Tuesday, much to the relief of the struggling Ukrainian defenders. With shouts of "Churchill not Chamberlain" it seems that the House is beginning to recognize that we are in a prewar situation and has to act accordingly.

Further, in another victory for the center, Congress passed a two year reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which enable warrantless surveillance outside of the United States even if it involves contact with U.S. citizens. This law has served us well for over four decades.

Speaker Michael Johnson put his job on the line with his actions and let us hope that he understands that standing up to the bullies in his own party, will strengthen him, rather than bring him down.