Mr. Grove is a Chief Warrant Officer with the Adjutant General Division, United States Army Headquarters in Europe. The views expressed here are his own.
Government officials of post-World War I Germany deliberately embarked upon a policy of monetary inflation as a means (they thought) of solving the country’s economic difficulties. They assumed that inflation could be controlled and that “a little inflation” would stimulate business and make for a healthy economy. The inevitable results of such criminal tinkering with a nation’s economy are starkly revealed in these figures from a German history book (Um Volksstaat and Völkergemeinschaft) published by Ernst Klett, Stuttgart, 1961, page 149) Prices in Germany (In Marks)
|
1914 |
1918 1922 |
1923 |
|||
|
Summer |
November |
||||
|
Potatoes (pound) |
0.04 |
0.12 |
80 |
2,000 |
50,000,000,000 |
|
Egg (one) |
0.08 |
0.25 |
180 |
5,000 |
80,000,000,000 |
|
Beer (glass) |
0.13 |
0.17 |
60 |
3,000 |
150,000,000,000 |
|
Meat (pound) |
0.9 |
2 |
1,200 |
90,000 |
3,200,000,000,000 |
|
Butter (pound) |
1.4 |
3 |
2,400 |
150,000 |
6,000,000,000,000 |
Out of the economic chaos thus created came Hitler, World War II, and the omnipotent governments threatening our world today. The current crisis in Berlin is but another manifestation of the continuing conflict between insatiable government and freedom-oriented individual man. The nature of that conflict has not changed over the past six thousand years.
