Confidence and Gold: German War Finance 1914–1918

Abstract

In January 1915, Sir William Grenfell Max-Müller, an intelligence officer in the British Foreign Office, recorded the following remark from a German trade journal.As long as the confidence in military and political victory continues, we need not fear our paper system and its consequences. But one sees immediately what would be bound to threaten us in the contrary case—a ruin to avoid which we are compelled to sacrifice the last man and the last penny.1