By staking their personal reputations on the stability of the Reichsmark already in the spring of 1933, Hitler and Schacht had done their best to render the topic of devaluation non-negotiable. Schacht, furthermore, in his arguments with Germany’s creditors, played on habits of thought that had become deeply ingrained since the reparations debates of the 1920s. It had become a commonplace in German economic discussion to view the country’s balance of payments problems as ‘structural’ and thus beyond Germany’s own power to control.
