Richard Schüller’s Review of The Danube Basin and the German Economic Sphere (1944)

Richard Schüller’s journal book review assesses Antonín Basch’s account of the Danubian economies between the world wars and its proposals for postwar reconstruction. Its central concern is how the successor states’ pursuit of economic self-sufficiency weakened regional interdependence and facilitated German domination. Schüller follows the book from protectionism through economic crisis and administrative controls to reconstruction, combining strong approval with pointed qualifications. Basch’s experience in Czechoslovak economic policy gives his analysis authority, although Schüller recognizes the potential partiality of a participant’s history:

Basch's judgment is almost always well balanced, and he has produced a very instructive basic work on the economic problems of southeastern Europe.

The qualification “almost always” matters: Schüller endorses the book without surrendering his own judgment. He places it after Leon Pasvolsky’s earlier criticism of Danubian economic nationalism and treats the world crisis beginning in 1929 as exposing problems obscured by the preceding years’ apparent progress. The successor states had failed to preserve their inherited economic relations, substituting protective barriers for cooperation.

Schüller sharpens Basch’s criticism of Czechoslovakia by emphasizing its dependence on regional markets. In 1924, nearly 40 percent of its exports went to Danubian countries, while only 19 percent of its imports came from them. Restricting those imports therefore undermined an exchange relationship essential to its own industry. Costly agricultural expansion in Czechoslovakia and Austria further reduced opportunities for neighboring agricultural exporters. Germany’s and Italy’s drive toward self-sufficiency compounded the damage. Schüller’s argument links these apparently separate national policies: agricultural countries lost markets, while industrial countries suffered unemployment as their customers’ purchasing capacity contracted. Protection did not insulate either side from regional deterioration.

The review gives particular prominence to Basch’s treatment of exchange and foreign-trade controls, praising his analysis of their effects on prices, exchange rates, and trade. Their relevance extends beyond historical explanation because economists expected such controls to remain necessary for some years after the war. Yet anticipated necessity does not establish their desirability: Basch’s criticism of exchange control as arbitrary import restriction informs a broader account of fragmentation.

In an excellent analysis he describes the progressive disintegration of the Danubian basin, whose small countries tried to become more and more self-sufficient and became only divided and disillusioned.

This is the review’s principal conceptual connection: national attempts at economic independence produced collective weakness. Limited cooperation failed to reverse the process, while Germany expanded its influence without effective resistance from the Western powers. Schüller credits Basch with explaining the techniques through which Nazi economic pressure culminated in occupation and war. Economic disintegration thus becomes part of the explanation for political subordination.

The reconstruction discussion retains this concern with interdependence but resists sweeping institutional solutions. Schüller approves Basch’s opposition to excessively costly agricultural expansion in industrial Europe. He also reports Basch’s case for temporary preferential treatment for eastern European agriculture while it adopts more intensive and diversified production, noting the difficulty of changing inherited peasant practices. Industrial development would require foreign capital and technical assistance.

With good reason he is skeptical about bureaucratic management of the economic reorientation, and about the possibility of a Danubian customs union or federation; he thinks it would be wise to begin cooperation on a more modest scale.

Schüller therefore endorses practical, incremental cooperation rather than assuming that regional unity can simply be imposed. His closing qualification concerns the geopolitical conditions of reconstruction. Basch leaves the relative strength of Western and Russian influence unresolved; the reviewer signals that intervening events have made that uncertainty less open:

But since Dr. Basch wrote his excellent book it has become possible at least to guess.

Without specifying the outcome, this ending marks the distance between Basch’s planning horizon and Schüller’s wartime vantage point. The review values economic expertise while insisting that successful regional reconstruction also depends on the distribution of political power.