ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that most of the contributions from both historians and theorists to the recent debate failed to appreciate a particular characteristic of European crisis experiences, namely their fundamentally political character and the challenges this implies to policy makers. To make this argument, the chapter first borrows from Dani Rodrik the framework of a political trilemma between cross-border economic integration, national institutions and democracy and discusses its relation to the more commonly known macroeconomic trilemma as well as some limitations of the framework. It argues that under the classical gold standard, policy makers de facto chose to sacrifice monetary policy autonomy, a policy which became increasingly untenable during the inter-war period. The bill was deferred until Germany would become sufficiently prosperous, it had far-reaching political implications. The focus of the still on-going debate is on the assessment of Heinrich Brning's economic policy between June 1931 and May 1932.
