There can be no doubt that Germany’s sudden defeat in the autumn of 1918 shocked Stresemann deeply, leaving him close to both physical and psychological collapse. It permanently shook his confidence in military force as a means of power politics, certainly as far as Germany was concerned. More fundamentally, it raised doubts in his mind about the German social and political system, which had proved less resilient than that of either Britain or France. This, however, merely reinforced his belief in the determining force of economics. The world economy was the one sphere in which Germany was
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