In the 1890s and 1900s Wilhelmine Germany had cheered itself with the belief that it was rapidly catching up with Britain.16 Though this was clearly good news, it also carried with it an acknowledgement of Germany’s relative backwardness. In the aftermath of World War I, hyperinflation and the imposition of a punitive reparations regime, it was merely common sense that Germany’s economic development had been thrown back by decades.
