German foreign debt stood at 21.514 billion marks; the main sources of aid were the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Detlev Peukert argued the financial problems that arose in the early 1920s, were a result of post-war loans and the way Germany funded her war effort, and not the result of reparations. During the First World War, Germany did not raise taxes or create new ones to pay for war-time expenses. Rather, loans were taken out, placing Germany in an economically precarious position as more money entered circulation, destroying the link between paper money and the gold reserve that had been maintained before the war. With its defeat, Germany could not impose reparations and pay off her war debts now, which were now colossal. Historian Niall Ferguson partially supports this analysis: had reparations not been imposed, Germany would still have had significant problems caused by the need to pay war debts and the demands of voters for more social services. Ferguson argued that these problems were aggravated by a trade deficit and a weak exchange rate for the mark during 1920. Afterwards, as the value of the mark rose, inflation became a problem. None of these were the result of reparations. According to Ferguson, even without reparations total public spending in Germany between 1920 and 1923 was 33 per cent of total net national product. A.J.P. Taylor wrote "Germany was a net gainer by the financial transactions of the nineteen-twenties: she borrowed far more from private American investors ... than she paid in reparations". P.M.H. Bell stated the creation of a multi-national committee, which resulted in the Dawes Plan, was done to consider ways the German budget could be balanced, the currency stabilized, and the German economy fixed to ease reparation payments. Max Winkler wrote that from 1924 onward, German officials were "virtually flooded with loan offers by foreigners". Overall, the German economy performed reasonably well until the foreign investments funding the economy and the loans funding reparations payments were suddenly withdrawn after the 1929 Stock Market Crash. This collapse was magnified by the volume of loans provided to German companies by US lenders. Even the reduced payments of the Dawes Plan were mainly financed through a large volume of international loans. While Germany initially had a trade deficit, British policy during the early 1920s was to reintegrate Germany into European trade as soon as possible. Likewise, France