this conviction that statistical evidence to the contrary was greeted with howls of anger and disbelief.17 It was widely believed that British workers enjoyed a higher standard of living than their German counterparts, a fact to which many attributed the chronic underemployment of British industry in the 1920s. The remarkable affluence of the British middle classes in the inter-war period had no counterpart in Germany. Added to this, the impression of British economic power was multiplied by its Imperial possessions. To Germans it seemed that Britain and the other colonial powers, along with
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