Nationalist Socialism as a path to Totalitarian Utopia. See any familiar patterns here?
Description: The author focuses on the main Nazi work creation programs like motorization, Autobahn, emergency relief, and rearmament. He stresses on the fact that most work creation from the period 1933-1936 was not a result of rearmament rather a fierce attack on employment through some of the methods mentioned above. In addition, the growing control of the Nazi party over all aspects of the economy is clearly identified in every chapter as this control grows. The book is loaded with information.
Professor Silverman argues, as a result of impressive research in Nazi archives, that it was work creation programs that account for this "miracle" and it was the 4-year Plan announced in 1936 that represented an emphasis on autarky and arms and a seller's market. Plans called for motorization and the famous autobahns. It is natural to compare Hitler's achievements with FDR's New Deal. Strangely Silverman hardly mention the USSR as a source of ideas in the Hitler years, though the 4-year Plan itself was inspired by the Soviet FYP, the second of which was being completed by the time Goebbels began administering the German equivalent. Earlier (February,1935) Soviet-type "work books" necessary for employment were introduced.
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Hitler was named "Man of the Year" in 1938 by Time Magazine. They noted Hitler's anti-capitalistic economic policies:
"Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism."
(Source: Time Magazine; Jaunuary 2, 1939.)
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Hitler setup the Labour Front. Both employers and employees joined it. According to the National Labour Law of January 20, 1934, the state would exert direct influence and control over all business employing more than twenty persons. In other words, both employers and employees were put under the control of the government.
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Summary: Below is a short economic analysis of German Economy under the Nazis. It is apparent they ran a centralized collectivist economy just like the Soviet Union. It was a political party that acted much in the same way the American Left does in regard to unemployment and trying to use the government to decrease it. It notes that the Nazis used public works to a large extent, which is exceedingly leftist, and put people to work for the State.
The Nazis started enacting other leftist ploys like price freezes and starting expanding the role of the government and destroying any freedom left in the Market. Private Property owners were dictated to by the State. Clearly Nazis were opponents of capitalism through and through.
Notes on: "On the Theory of the Centrally Administered Economy: An Analysis of the German Experiment," by Walter Eucken
Walter Eucken was a professor of economics at the University of Freiburg, Germany and an architect of the economic reforms that led to the Economic Miracle. In this article Eucken wanted to explain the problems and weaknesses of centrally administered economies such as that of National Socialist (Nazi) Germany and the Soviet Union.
Hitler's Leftist Economic Policies
Or is it April 15th?
