On the one hand, the Bundesbank had a duty--to the Bretton Woods system, to defend the realm of Germany--to see the speculators off and hold the line. On the other hand, the Bundesbank intensely disliked printing Deutsche Marks in defence of exchange rates it had not chosen and in quantities it despised because these marks threatened to flood back into Germany later, causing domestic prices to rise and bringing back memories of the hyperinflation of the early 1920s.

[...] as long as they felt that the Bretton Woods system was sound. And the system was sound as long as America was in surplus with the rest of the world.