ABSTRACT
The victory of the Allied powers during World War II paved the way for a more consistent restructuring of the world economy along the lines planned by business internationalists at the onset of the war. The extreme difficulties of the interwar period are in part attributable to conflict between bearish creditor interests, typically represented by large banks, and bullish interests wishing to restore employment and growth. Heavy wartime borrowing and spending had created significant and uneven inflation among various countries. The Soviet Union or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was the worlds first enduring socialist state. Japan's political system was very different from that of Germany, let alone Soviet Russia, but by 1932 it too was dominated by violent bullish nationalists mobilized to action by the impact of the Great Depression on Japan. German and Japanese war aims in World War II were strongly shaped by the economic needs of their business nationalism.
