Good write up. Japan's navy soundly beat Russia's navy. Didn't help that the British had denied coaling station access and the Russian navy had to go around Africa and then a long trek through warm waters while barnacles and coral built up on their hulls.

The Manchuria campaign did not "soundly" beat the Russians. It was an extremely brutal affair with two armies that were at parity of size and capabilities. Russia had to bring everything via the Siberian RR. Nonetheless it was a defeat of a European white power.

Economist Keynes's book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919 (haven't read it) is my go-to as the hyperinflation didn't set in until 1920-23. Quoting Keynes per Wiki:

>I cannot leave this subject as though its just treatment wholly depended either on our pledges or on economic facts. The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, – abhorrent and detestable, even if it was possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe.

When Money Dies mentions that the Nazis rose during the hyperinflation, but once a new Rentenmark in Nov 1923 stabilized the currency, the Nazi's appeal faded away --- until the Great Depression destabilized Germany again.

Using a CPI or GDP deflator index doesn't really work well over such a long time frame. There's been different monetary regimes both in the US and in Germany at that time. You have to look at it as an underwriting of whether the govt could pay and the economy could be taxed. CPI in the US is corrupted a long time ago for political minimization. So whenever I see John D Rockefeller was worth $x billion in today's dollars or a 1890 house was cost $y in 2022 dollars it doesn't really compute. You have to look at average wages and average product prices to get proper proportionality.

> in peacetime the German economy is already on a heavy war footing.

This is propaganda by the Allies before and after the war.

Recall that the Versailles Treaty crippled and excessively limited the German military in the 1920s. So the Germans did a lot of catching up in the 1930s and eagerly bragged about this in news films. In fact, much of the logistics in the invasion of Poland was via horses though we see the films of mechanized/tanks. Speer explained that there was a reluctance to fully mobilize in part because the German leadership was very sensitive to keeping consumer goods going to the public and in part because they thought they could negotiate from a position of strength after Poland -- not anticipating a full fledged scorched-earth unconditional-surrender war over a country far from the UK and France. While at a train station, Goebbels complained about seeing upper-class German women wearing furs riding in 1st class returning from vacations in Italy as late as 1943 while the soldiers being shipped out wait sitting on the cold concrete. That's when (plus considering the defeat in Stalingrad shocked everyone) he made his "Total War" speech and war production accelerated by Speer. Look at war production output charts comparing 1938 through 1944, and it is clear as night and day supporting my argument.