Among these positive achievements of Hitler the one outshining all others was his economic miracle. The term did not then exist; it was coined, much later, for the astonishingly rapid reconstruction feat of the Erhard era in Western Germany after the Second World War, but it applies even better to what was taking place in Germany under Hitler during the mid thirties. There was then a much deeper and stronger impression that a real miracle was being accomplished, and that the man who accomplished it, Hitler, was a miracle worker.
In January 1933, when Hitler became Reich Chancellor, there were six million unemployed in Germany. A mere three years later, in 1936, there was full employment. Crying need and mass hardship had generally turned into modest but comfortable prosperity. Almost equally important: helplessness and hopelessness had given way to confidence and self-assurance. Even more miraculous was the fact that the transition from depression to economic boom had been accomplished without inflation, at totally stable wages and prices. Not even Ludwig Erhard succeeded in doing that later in post-war Western Germany.
It is difficult to picture adequately the grateful amazement with which the Germans reacted to that miracle, which, more particularly, made vast numbers of German workers switch from the Social Democrats and the Communists to Hitler after 1933. This grateful amazement entirely dominated the mood of the German masses during the 1936 to 1938 period and made anyone who still rejected Hitler seem a querulous fault-finder. ‘The man may have his faults, but he has given us work and bread again’ was the million-fold view during those years of former Social Democrat and Communist voters who in 1933 had still represented the great mass of Hitler’s opponents.
Was the German economic miracle of the thirties really Hitler’s achievement? In spite of all conceivable objections one will probably have to reply in the affirmative. It is entirely true that in matters of economics and economic policy Hitler was a layman; in the main the various ideas with which the economic miracle was set in motion did not come from him. In particular that giddy piece of financial virtuosity on which everything depended was clearly the work of another man, his ‘financial wizard’ Hjalmar Schacht. But it was Hitler who had appointed Schacht and who had given him a free hand, first to run the Reichsbank and then also the Ministry of Economic Affairs. And it was Hitler who had fished out from their pigeonholes all those reflation plans which had existed before him but which, before him, had fallen victim to all kinds of reservations, mainly of a financial nature. Hitler had them put into effect, from special tax vouchers, to the Labour Service, and to the autobahn. He was not a political economist and he had never dreamed that he would rise to power by way of an economic slump and with the task of liquidating mass unemployment. That was not his kind of task at all; economic matters, prior to 1933, had played virtually no part in his plans or political thinking. But he possessed enough political instinct to grasp that they were playing the main part just then and, surprisingly, he also had enough economic instinct to understand — unlike, for instance the unfortunate Chancellor Brüning, one of his predecessors — that expansion was more important at that moment than budgetary or monetary stability.
In addition, of course, unlike his predecessors, he also possessed the power to impose, by force, at least the semblance of monetary stability. After all, we must not disregard the seamy side of Hitler’s economic miracle. Since it was taking place amidst a continuing world-wide depression and was making Germany an island of prosperity, it required the isolation of the German economy from the outside world; and since its financing, of its very nature, was inevitably inflationary it required the imposition from above of fixed wages and prices. For a dictatorial regime, with concentration camps in the background, both these things were possible. Hitler had no need to consider either the employers’ associations or the trade unions because he could forcibly bring the two together in the ‘German Labour Front’ and thus paralyse them.
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The economic miracle was Hitler’s most popular achievement but not his only one. At least as sensational, and just as unexpected, was the remilitarization and rearmament of Germany which was likewise successfully accomplished during the first six years of his rule. When Hitler became Reich Chancellor Germany had an army of 100,000 men without modern weapons, and it had no air force. By 1938 it was the strongest military and air power in Europe. An incredible achievement! This, too, would not have been possible without certain preparatory work during the Weimar period, and again it was not Hitler’s own work down to the last detail but in the main a tremendous achievement of the military establishment. But it was Hitler who gave the order and provided the inspiration. The military miracle is even less conceivable without Hitler’s decisive impetus than the economic miracle, and even more than the economic miracle, which was an improvisation on Hitler’s part, it stemmed from his long-cherished plans and intentions. That it did not, in Hitler’s hands, subsequently work to Germany’s benefit is a different matter. It remains an achievement nevertheless, and, just as the economic miracle, an achievement of which no one beforehand would have thought Hitler capable. That he accomplished it against all expectations produced amazement and admiration, though perhaps also a certain measure of anxiety on the part of some people. (What did he want all that frenzied rearmament for?) However, most people reacted to it with satisfaction and national pride. In the military as in the economic sphere Hitler had proved himself a miracle worker and only the most obdurate know-alls could now deny him their gratitude and allegiance.
Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (Folio Society, 2011), Pp. 27-30
Haffner also makes an important point as to the relevance of rearmament:
First, it has often been claimed that Hitler’s economic miracle and his military miracle were basically the same thing, that full employment was entirely, or at least predominantly, due to rearmament. That is not so. Certainly conscription removed a few hundreds of thousands of potential unemployed from the streets, and the mass production of tanks, guns and aircraft provided wages and livelihood for a few hundreds of thousands of metal and engineering workers. But the great bulk of the six million unemployed whom Hitler had inherited found re-employment in entirely normal civilian industries. Goering, who uttered a lot of boastful nonsense in the course of his life, then coined the misleading slogan of ‘guns instead of butter’. In actual fact, the Third Reich was producing guns and butter, and a great many other things.
Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (Folio Society, 2011), Pp. 30
Hitler even revolutionized the military around the world, in a way that nobody ever had before:
Hitler personally intervened and laid down the structure of the new Wehrmacht and hence its future manner of operation. He took the decision, against what was then still the overwhelming majority of the military experts, to create integrated, independently operating armoured divisions and tank armies. These novel army formations, possessed in 1938 only by the German Army, proved to be the campaign-deciding weapon during the first two years of the war. They were subsequently copied by all other armies.
Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (Folio Society, 2011), Pp. 31
Hitler was also immensely popular among more than 90% of the German people:
in 1938, Hitler had succeeded in winning over to himself the great majority of those who in 1933 had still voted against him — perhaps his greatest achievement of all. It was an achievement which the surviving older generation finds embarrassing and the posthumous younger generation incomprehensible. Today the ‘How could we?’ of the old and the ‘How could you?’ of the young trip easily off the tongue.
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Those converted or semi-converted by the spectacle of Hitler’s achievements did not as a rule become National Socialists, but they became followers of Hitler, believers in the Führer. And they, at the peak of the general faith in the Führer, were certainly more than 90 per cent of all Germans.
A colossal achievement to have united virtually the entire nation behind him — and accomplished in less than ten years! Accomplished, moreover, on the whole not by demagogy but by achievement. When, in the twenties, Hitler had at his disposal nothing but his demagogy, his hypnotic oratory, his intoxicating and illusionist skills as a producer of mass spectacles he hardly ever gained more than 5 per cent of all Germans as his followers; in the Reichstag elections of 1928 it was 2.5 per cent. The next 40 per cent were driven into his arms by the economic plight of 1930-33 and by the total helpless failure of all other governments and parties in the face of that plight. The remaining, decisive, 50 per cent, however, he gained after 1933 mainly through his achievements. Anyone who, say in 1938, uttered a critical remark about Hitler, in circles where that was still possible, would inevitably, sooner or later — sometimes after half-hearted agreement (‘I don’t like that business with the Jews either’), — have received the answer, ‘But look at all the things the man has achieved!’ Not, for instance, ‘But isn’t he an enthralling speaker!’; nor, ‘But wasn’t he wonderful again at the last Party Rally!’; and not even, ‘But look at his successes!’ No, it was, ‘But look at all the things the man has achieved!’ And what, in 1938, or still in the spring of 1939, could one really reply to that?
Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (Folio Society, 2011), Pp. 32, 34
