Clases de historia no contada: La democracia en Alemania estaba moribunda aun antes de que Hitler se hiciera del poder.

De la mano de las desesperadas medidas para combatir la crisis económica que enfrentaban en los 30's, este artículo menciona que la democracia como tal estaba vencida o hecha a un lado por lo menos aun antes de que Hitler llegara al poder. De lo que se entera uno si se mantienen leyendo. Un artículo que revisa esa época tratando de entender y encontrar soluciones a la crisis europea actual.

http://www.businessinsider.com/weimar-germany-was-destroyed-by-unpopular-austerity-measures-not-hyper-inflation-2012-2

Este es un extracto y el texto importante en negritas:

At the end of its hyperinflation, Germany locked itself into a currency regime, the international gold standard, which was deliberately designed to be so limiting that exit was impossible. The anticipated consequence was that the country would appear credible and become attractive to foreign capital.

As the strategy worked, capital inflows sparked both public-sector and private-sector booms. Governments at all levels funded politically attractive but expensive infrastructure projects.

But there was a downside. The boom’s vigor, coupled with prior experience of inflation, led to wage increases that were not matched by productivity gains. As a result, Weimar Germany lost competitiveness in the late 1920’s, in the same way that Southern Europe did in the 2000’s. In both cases, it was clear that the capital inflows could not continue forever, and weakening competitiveness brought the end forward.

When the reversal came, Germany was trapped. As foreigners and Germans alike withdrew deposits, banks were driven into insolvency and forced to liquidate their assets at very fire-sale prices. The government had to prop up failed banks; but it could fund deficits only by borrowing from the banks. Given its commitment to the fixed exchange rate of the gold standard, that meant that it had to impose ever more unpopular austerity measures.

Given all of these constraints, there was no easy way out. The path immediately adopted in the wake of the 1931 banking crisis was to impose capital controls.

The crisis was a defeat for democracy. The democratic parties’ obvious response was to flee from political responsibility during the period of the greatest economic hardship. The Weimar Republic’s last fully parliamentary government had already collapsed in March 1930 under the political weight of an impossible fiscal dilemma. Spending cuts alienated the left; tax increases angered the right.

Democratic parties acquiesced in the use of the constitution’s emergency provisions to bypass parliament and enact legislation in the form of decrees. In this way, democracy was already substantially eroded before the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933.

Banking and budget problems, fiscal constraints, and the emergence of “non-political” technocratic governments: all are horribly familiar to Germans with a sense of the past. The negative lesson of the interwar experience – that piling up more fiscal liabilities does not solve the problem – is already apparent in today’s Europe. But there is a positive lesson to be drawn as well: the possibility of an international order that supports rather than undermines democratic regimes at the moment when they take unpopular measures.

Read more: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/james64/English#ixzz1ngz4KZvm