The significance of the summer crisis of 1934 from Schacht’s point of view was that it splintered the Anglo-American front. A trade war with Britain would undoubtedly have been a disaster for Germany, but it would also have had severe consequences for the British. Schacht’s brinksmanship was clearly motivated by an acute sense of what was at stake for the City of London and for British exporters in Anglo-German economic relations.
