Editing Walther Rathenau (section)

== In government ==

=== War Raw Materials Department ===
Rathenau played a key role in convincing the War Ministry to set up the War Raw Materials Department (''[[Kriegsrohstoffabteilung]]'', KRA), of which he was put in charge in August 1914 and where he established its fundamental policies and procedures. The KRA focused on raw materials threatened by the [[Blockade of Germany (1914–1919)|British blockade]], as well as supplies from occupied Belgium and France. It set prices, regulated the distribution to vital war industries and began the development of substitute raw materials.<ref name=":1">{{cite web |last1=Asmuss |first1=Burkhard |title=Die Kriegsrohstoffabteilung |url=https://www.dhm.de/lemo/kapitel/erster-weltkrieg/industrie-und-wirtschaft/kriegsrohstoffabteilung.html |accessdate=2 October 2020 |website=www.dhm.de |publisher=Deutsches Historisches Museum |language=de}}</ref> 

He left the KRA in March 1915 and became president of AEG upon his father's death in June of that year.<ref name=":0" /> 

=== Postwar statesman ===
Rathenau was a moderate liberal in politics. After World War I, he joined the [[German Democratic Party]] (DDP) and moved to the left in the face of postwar chaos. Passionate about social equality, he rejected state ownership of industry and instead advocated greater worker participation in the management of companies.{{Sfn|Wehler|1985|p=235}} His ideas were influential in postwar governments, although in 1919 when his name was mentioned in the [[Weimar National Assembly]] as a candidate for president of Germany, there was a burst of laughter among the other members.{{Sfn|Volkov|2012|p=179}} Referring to the extreme right-wing organizations that arose within months of the communist-inspired [[Spartacist uprising]] in January 1919, he said in the [[Reichstag (Weimar Republic)|Reichstag]] that they were, "the product of a state in which for centuries no one has ruled who was not a member of, or a convert to, military feudalism".{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}} 

In 1920, he worked on the Socialisation Commission, a group of experts set up by the [[Council of the People's Deputies]] in November 1918 to examine ways of socialising parts of the German economy, and took part in the [[Spa Conference of 1920|Spa Conference]], at which German disarmament and reparations were discussed. Because of his international reputation and negotiating skills, he became [[Reich Ministry for Reconstruction|minister of reconstruction]] in Chancellor [[Joseph Wirth]]'s cabinet in May 1921. He supported Wirth's "fulfilment policy", which attempted to show that Germany was unable to meet the [[Allies of World War I|Entente]]'s reparations demands by making a good faith effort to fulfil them. In October he concluded the Wiesbaden Agreement with France on private-sector German deliveries of goods to French war victims. Rathenau resigned as minister at the end of October when the DDP withdrew from the governing coalition, but he continued to work for the government in London and at the Cannes Conference on reparations.<ref name=":0" />

=== Foreign minister ===
In 1922, Rathenau became foreign minister in [[Second Wirth cabinet|Wirth's second cabinet]]. His insistence that Germany should fulfil its obligations under the [[Treaty of Versailles]] but work for a revision of its terms infuriated extreme German nationalists.{{sfn|Dallas|2000|p=517}} He also angered them by negotiating the [[Treaty of Rapallo (1922)|Treaty of Rapallo]] with the [[Soviet Union]], which was signed on 16 April 1922 on the sidelines of the [[Genoa Economic and Financial Conference (1922)|Conference of Genoa]]. The Rapallo Treaty, which normalised relations between Germany and the USSR, allowed Germany to return to the international diplomatic stage but isolated it from the Western powers.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sabrow |first=Martin |date=2003 |title=Rathenau, Walther |url=https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd118598430.html#ndbcontent |access-date=29 May 2024 |website=Neue Deutsche Biographie 21 |pages=174-176 [Online-Version] |language=de}}</ref>

The leaders of the still obscure [[Nazi Party]] and other extremist groups claimed that he was part of a "[[Jewish Bolshevism|Jewish-communist conspiracy]]", despite the fact that he was a liberal German nationalist who had bolstered the country's war effort.<ref name=":2" /> The British politician [[Robert Boothby]] wrote of him, "He was something that only a German Jew could simultaneously be: a prophet, a philosopher, a mystic, a writer, a statesman, an industrial magnate of the highest and greatest order, and the pioneer of what has become known as 'industrial rationalisation'."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Simkin |first=John |date=September 1997 |title=Walther Rathenau |url=https://spartacus-educational.com/GERrathenau.htm |access-date=29 May 2024 |website=Spartacus Educational |page=}}</ref>