In 1913, America had a negative foreign trade balance, and its investments in the economies of other countries, mainly Latin American ones, were less than the external public debt. If at the end of 1913, US capital was placed abroad in the amount of 2.065 billion of the then dollars, then the United States itself owed 5 billion dollars. It should be noted that these were dollars of the 1873 model, each of which at that time was equated to 1.50463 grams of pure gold. In other words, the external debt of the United States in 1913 was 218 billion current dollars.
But with the outbreak of World War I, the picture changed.
From August 1, 1914 to January 1, 1917, the Americans provided loans to the belligerent countries for 1 billion 900 million dollars. Already in April 1915, Thomas Lamont, one of the co-owners of the Morgan financial empire, speaking to reporters, said that America needed to help its European allies as much as possible, as this would lead to the Americans buying out their debt obligations to France and England. Even more Americans placed loans after the US entered the war. By the end of the war, their total volume amounted to 10 billion 85 million dollars. Of these, approximately 7 billion went to the purchase of weapons and military materials from the Americans themselves.
As a result, America has turned from one of the largest debtors into the largest creditor. France and England, on the contrary, have turned from the world's largest creditors into the world's largest debtors.
In the case of France, this was facilitated by the fact that military operations were taking place on the territory of this country, and its northeastern part, where most of the heavy industry was concentrated, was under German occupation throughout the war. France's own gold reserves at the beginning of the war were estimated at $ 845 million, and it is not surprising that all of them were spent in the first months of the war.
As for England, the point here was that in unofficial conversations, American statesmen throughout the war and the first post-war years assured their British partners that at the end of the war America would partially write off the debts of these countries, and partially shift the burden of their payments to the shoulders of the defeated powers, linking the schedule of repayment of debts of the borrowing countries with the schedule of receiving reparation payments from the Central Powers. Thunder struck on March 4, 1920. On this day, the British received a response from the US Treasury Secretary to a message from their Treasury Secretary sent on February 20 of the same year. The answer said something like the following:
In vain, Prime Minister David Lloyd George pleaded with President Woodrow Wilson to renegotiate the payment terms. In a letter dated November 3, 1920, written in response to Lloyd George's letter, President Wilson wrote about the same thing as his Treasury Secretary in his March letter.
Promotional video:
In the end, the issue of war debts was brought up to the Genoa Conference. It was decided that the 4 billion 600 million that England owed would be paid within 62 years. At the same time, until 1932, the British had to pay 3% per annum, and from 1933 to 1982 - 3.5%. Thus, the amount of interest was supposed to be 6 billion 505 million 965 thousand dollars. The total amount of payments was determined in the amount of 11 billion 105 million 965 thousand dollars.
Meanwhile, most of the reparation payments, on which Lloyd Jord so hoped, went not to the British, but to the French, although a fairly significant percentage of them went to England. In general, the distribution of reparations in percentage to each country looked like this:
France - 54.46%
England - 23.04%
Italy - 10%
Belgium - 4.5%
Japan - 0.75%
Portugal - 0.75%
Romania - 1.1%
Greece - 0.4%
Yugoslavia - 5%
If we take into account the fact that Germany pledged to pay 650 million dollars annually, then for England this amount was equal to 149 million 760 thousand dollars a year. Until 1933, the British had to pay interest to the Americans at $ 138 million annually. Thus, it would seem that reparation payments would fully cover the first 10 years of interest on the debt. Only after 1933, the British would have to pay 161 million a year, which would exceed the amount of reparation receipts by only a little over 11 million. However, already in 1923 not a single pfennig came from Germany. France got out of the situation by occupying the Ruhr together with Belgium. These two countries have taken their toll. And what were the British to do? The British called a London conferenceon which on August 16, 1924, a reparation plan for Germany was approved, developed by an international committee of experts chaired by the American banker Charles Gates Dawes. The plan provided for a loan of 200 million dollars to Germany (including 110 million dollars from American banks) to stabilize the mark, set the amount of payments to Germany for the first 5 years at 1-1.75 billion marks a year, and then 2.5 billion marks a year.
1 billion gold marks was then approximately $ 238 million. The same 23.04% for England in monetary terms would have been 54 million 835 thousand dollars, which was 36.6% of the amount that the British had to pay to the Americans. The remaining 95 million England had to pay from the pockets of its own taxpayers. Even of the 1.75 million marks that Germany would have had to pay in 1929, England would have received only 96 million dollars. But even these underestimated amounts were paid by Germany irregularly, and by the beginning of the 30s it again stopped payments. To settle payments at the 1929-30 Hague Conference on Reparations, a second reparation plan for Germany was developed, replacing the Dawes plan. This plan was called Young's plan, after the name of its developer. This plan provided for a new reduction in reparation payments. This plan was carried out for only one year. In 1931, Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning (1885-1970) achieved a moratorium on these payments, and Germany did not pay anything else.
Soviet Russia was also extremely bad for the British. She did not recognize her debts, which at the time of the October Revolution amounted to 13.2 billion (Sidorov A. L. The financial situation of Russia during the First World War. M., 1960, pp. 525-526), and given the debts of Kolchak, Wrangel, Miller and other "rulers of Russia" - 18.5 billion gold rubles. The gold ruble, as mentioned in the previous chapter, contained 0.77423544 grams of pure gold and was thus equal to 0.514 568 658 dollars. Or, we can say that the dollar was worth 1.94 of the pre-war ruble. By the way, in 1924 our gold standard was restored, and the gold content of the ruble was thus equated to 0.77423544. True, in this case, the main monetary unit was not the ruble, but the chervonets, divided by 10 rubles or 1,000 kopecks.
But most of all America got rich during the Second World War: on September 1, 1939, Hitler attacked Poland, and on September 16, the Polish government and military command fled to Romania. Together with them, the Polish gold reserves also left the country.
Soon, Polish gold was in France. Then, for a short period, the gold of defeated Belgium turned out to be in France, which had been imported in large quantities into Belgium from the Belgian Congo before the war. Finally it was France's turn. On June 14, 1940, the Germans entered Paris, and on the 19th, the newly built French battleship Richelieu left Brest. On June 23, the battleship arrived safely on the shores of French Senegal.
The battleship with a standard displacement of 38.5 thousand tons was armed with eight 380-mm guns with a barrel length of 45 calibers, which ejected shells weighing 881 kilograms at a distance of 37.5 kilometers. A six-boiler steam turbine with a capacity of 150 thousand horsepower allowed him to develop 30.5 knots, and his 330-mm armor belt and 150-mm armored deck could withstand a direct hit from a 500-kg bomb dropped from a height of 4,700 meters.
Battleship Richelieu.
But that was not the main thing.
In the holds of the battleship there was gold from Poland, Belgium, part of the gold of the Netherlands, and most importantly, the gold reserve of the French National Bank, which at the end of May 1940 amounted to 2 billion 477 million dollars - the largest in interwar Europe. Until November 1942, "Richelieu" calmly stood off the coast of French Senegal. True, on July 7, 1940, the British "Swordfish", which took off from the aircraft carrier "Hermes", tried to sink it with their torpedoes so that the battleship would not get to the Germans. A few days earlier, on July 4, 1940, the so-called Mers-El-Kebir incident took place. The British, who were allies of France two weeks ago, unexpectedly attacked French ships stationed at the Mers-el-Kebir naval base in Algeria. As a result of the shelling,produced by the guns of the British battleships "Barham" and "Resolution", the French lost several ships of the line, as well as 1,230 people killed, 310 missing and 311 wounded. But this time, having lost four aircraft from the battleship's fifteen 152-mm anti-aircraft guns, the British could only damage the battleship: one torpedo exploded under the bottom of the ship, and two depth charges - in the immediate vicinity of the sides.
Finally, on November 8, 1942, American troops landed in Dakar. The Richelieu received new damage that day: five hits from sixteen-inch shells fired from the American battleship Massachusetts caused an explosion of loaded guns in the upper right half-tower.
On January 30, 1943, the Americans took the Richelieu to New York for repairs. First, both damaged guns were replaced with exactly the same ones taken from another captured French ship - the unfinished battleship Jean Bar, stationed in Casablanca. Then the guns were bored to the British standard and, having supplied the battleship with English fifteen-inch shells, they sent it after repairs to fight the Japanese to the shores of Burma. The gold ended up in the hands of the Americans and migrated from the holds of the battleship to the storage facilities of Fort Knox.
Even earlier, Norwegian gold fell into the hands of the Americans. True, there was not so much of it. In the reserve of the Norwegian government before the occupation of the country, there was $ 84 million in gold. At that time, William Averell Harriman was the ambassador to Norway - the same Harriman who a little later, in 1943, became the US ambassador to the Soviet Union. He once told how Norwegian gold was taken to the coast on children's sledges and furniture vans by the American embassy staff. Then, on fishing boats, this very gold was transported under the nose of the Germans who had just captured Oslo to an American liner standing near the coast.
However, even before that, gold itself flowed to America. All its owners, both the governments of European countries and individuals, transferred their savings overseas.
If in October 1939 the US Federal Reserve System contained $ 17 billion in gold, by February 1940 this amount had increased by a whole billion. A billion of the money of that time is now worth 25.7 billion today. This is after Franklin Delano Roosevelt cut its gold content by 40.94%. On January 31, 1934, it was set at 0.888671 grams of pure gold per dollar. With the outbreak of active hostilities in Europe, the flow of gold to the United States increased even more. On May 10-14 alone, the US received $ 46 million worth of gold. When it became clear that France was about to collapse, the flow of gold to the United States took on enormous proportions. On June 3-4 alone, America received $ 500 million worth of gold.
But that is not all. Then the Americans gave these funds to the war-torn Europeans already on loan. Moreover, on the condition that this money will only buy American goods. Having thus received the same money back, the Americans again gave it in growth to their junior partners.
For example, on December 6, 1945, the Anglo-American loan agreement was signed, which entered into force on July 15, 1946. Under the agreement, England received from the United States 3 billion 750 million dollars. The 6th article of this agreement did not allow England to use this money to cover previous debts and did not allow until 1951 to take loans from other countries. The 8th article provided for the free exchange of British pounds for American dollars. The 9th article explicitly prohibited the use of this loan for the purchase of non-American goods. Immediately after the treaty came into force, the Americans raised the prices of their goods. As a result, the British lost 28% of the loan amount due to this price increase. Another 240 million, or 6.4%, was lost in the exchange of dollars for pounds. Thus,out of 3 billion 750 million until August 20, 1947, 3 billion 350 million were spent. On August 21, 1947, England stopped the free exchange of pounds for dollars, and the Americans blocked the issuance of the remaining 400 million. Thus, having robbed and robbed the rest of the world, America became the richest power.