- 11 Dec 2008 19:41
#1721803
First of all, Adolf Hitler was a terrible human being, a twisted, sick man and he brought irreparable shame on the German population under which it still suffers.
Nonetheless you have to admit that the Führer revitalised the devastated German economy through some of his policies. He caused a strange sort of - maybe unintentional - modernisation of German economics and overall lifestyle.
Hitler's approach to economics seemed to be a largely pragmatical. He neither endorsed the planned economy of the socialists, nor the laissez-faire economics of the right.
Success:
He helped create millions of jobs in pre-war Germany. He did this by ordering many partially publicly funded programmes, for example the building of Autobahnen, Nazi monuments and architecture and by supporting the car industry, thus creating Volkswagen.
Under Hitler's regime the propagandists of Nazism boasted about Germany's full employment. While this might not have been entirely the case, Hitler did away with the rampant unemployment of the Weimarer Republik, that was the cause of many protests, marches and clashes of workers and police. He also managed to bring the working class on his side, that originally always voted left in Germany.
How did he financiate all his prestigous programmes? He did it by cheating, with the help of the former president of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht (who actually is responsible that Iran is called Iran nowadays, and not Persia, but that is another story). Schacht created an imaginary company and initiated the so-called Mefo-Wechsel, by loaning credits with low interest rates. The fact that they were thus breaking the Treaty of Versailles didn't seem to bother anyone anymore.
Failure:
Well apart from the fact that Hitler not only created the Volkswagen car only to use it in war later, he also created the jobs purely to expand the industrial production, the military, another violation of the Treaty.
Another fact is that wages for ordinary workers actually fell under Hitler's 3rd Reich. While the standard of living rose for anyone who was active in the NSDAP, the actual wage of the working population fell by 25%, he forced workers to work at lower prices and - while giving them valuable jobs, exploited them shamelessly.
Concluding, Hitler's economic policies had a lasting effect on the German economy, his Autobahnen are still there, the Volkswagen is a very popular car and unemployment still creates displeasure.