also worked in favor to a major part of the German peasantry. In 1926, eight years after the Germans were defeated at World War I, the Junkers started to plot against the forces of democracy. They introduced a new era of increased agricultural protection, which once again favored the peasants and Junkers. Gerschenkron arrives at this conclusion, “that democratic reconstruction of Germany… in insurance of world peace calls for a radical elimination of the Junkers as a social and economic group.” He also recommends a radical land reform. To achieve the readjustment of agriculture and to place it on a competitive basis he suggests the introduction of a government trade monopoly of the bulk of agricultural products in Germany. With a monopoly in place, the government could set a price policy, which would force a number of farmers to discontinue grain production for the market and eventually carry out the needed adjustment of high cost agriculture to the international market conditions. Gerschenkron also warns of the possible difficulties of creating a government monopoly. He believes the management of the monopoly would require “great practical skill and energy”. He believes the Germans should include this program of the agricultural adjustment plan in the peace treaties and entrust its execution and supervision to an international economic agency. Influence Gerschenkron had a profound influence on his students. At Harvard, he led the Economic History Workshop and taught courses on Soviet economics and economic history. In economic history he taught a year-long course required of all graduate economics students. His course required two major dissertation papers and a final exam. He also led evening seminars once a week in which his graduate students would discuss ideas for dissertations and evaluate quantitative techniques. Many of his students went on to have productive careers, and a good number of them have attained presidency of the Economic History Association. Ten of his students in the mid-1960s prepared a Festschrift in his honor. The book was titled Industrialization in Two Systems and was published in 1966. Gerschenkron as a scholar Gerschenkron was known as an extremely bright scholar. As one of his former students Deirdre McCloskey put it, “Alexander Gerschenkron was not the best teacher or the best economist or the best historian among these—nor even, I think, the best human being. But he was the best scholar I have known.” Gerschenkron studied many subjects, from history of