Chapter 13, Germany will collapse (June 19 - July 10) begins with everyone’s eyes on Germany where the uncertainty about the French position towards the Hoover plan increases every day. More generally, politics comes to play a larger role, as Norman increasingly emphasizes that it’s about politics, and Harrison has to take Hoover’s plan into account. At the same time leadership in the epistemic community of central bankers shifts away from Norman toward Harrison, who enters into a dialogue with French central bankers. Tensions arise between Norman and Harrison, as the begin to subscribe to divergent narratives of the situation and what needs to be done. In Germany, the situation gets more concerning by the hour, and Hans Luther travels to London and Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to secure a giant credit to the Reichsbank.

After a brief introduction to the outbreak of the Austrian Credit Anstalt crisis in May 1931 and the early response by central bankers from Bank of England, the BIS and the New York Federal Reserve Bank, this chapter proceeds to present the book’s overall issues and main concepts, which will be used as a heuristic framework throughout the narrative. The main concepts of the book are radical uncertainty, sensemaking, narrative emplotment, imagined futures and epistemic communities. In the chapter, I discuss how these concepts are helpful in understanding central bankers’, and other actors’, decision-making and practices in the five month from May through September. The chapter also discusses my analytical strategy and presents the empirical material, which comes from the Bank of England, Bank for International Settlements, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the J.P. Morgan Archive, the Rothschild Archive and a few others. At the end of the chapter, I present the structure of the book.

Chapter 14, Aqnxiety within Germany at climax (July 11 - July 23). In this chapter tension reaches its climax as the Darmstädter und Nationalbank (Danatbank) fails on July 13. Without help from outside of Germany, the German government declares a bank holiday and introduces exchange controls, effectively ending the gold standard in Germany. The New York Fed and Harrison declines to intervene and the BIS does not have the resources or the inclination to intervene. Norman’s position that the situation goes back to the Versaille Peace agreement and is now a matter for governments strengthens. A conference in London is unable to come up with new solutions and meanwhile sterling comes under pressure. The fear of contagion beginning in early May is now a reality.