Claims about the so called "unsustainable National Socialist economy"

[Volksgenosse]

I have seen a video recently on YT that claims, Hitler waged war in order not to annex Danzig which at that time was overwhelmingly German (plus it had strategic importance) but in order to expand to the East until he reached the Caucasus. The real goal behind all this was that the NSDAP intended to gain resources etc. because according to the video, the German economy was unsustainable and it would collapse. Another claim is that the German economy had deficits most of the time, so Hitler was forced to buy loans. In that way, by expanding to the East he would be able to pay these loans. Finally, the guy in the video adds a bit of Holocaust drama and says that except the eastern expansion, the Germans killed the Jews and stole their property to avoid bankruptcy.

Here is the video, the Youtuber is called "TIK", check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQKM5b1SoS0

Personally, i believe that Hitler's struggle against the Soviet Union was genuinely ideological and strategic and not just a matter of economics.
I would appreciate if we could shed some light into this aspect of the German economy. Thanks

[Moderator]

FYI:
The mentioned 'TIK' & some other points from him are addressed here:
Youtube: TIK uses Evans to attack some Irving arguments
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13968
M1

[Otium]

This is nonsense, for many reasons. Particularly because no historians accept that Hitler went to war with Poland because of economic considerations:

He (Hitler) was not dragged into war by either the political or the military leadership, nor was he the victim of a rearmament dynamic that finally left him with no other option than war.

[...]

The argument that Hitler was forced to act was put forward above all by Tim Mason and has been largely rejected by other scholars. The dynamic created by rearmament played a role in ‘accelerating his aggressive policy’ but it did not by any means compel him to start a world war in summer 1939. . . .

Peter Longerich, Hitler: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2019), Pp. 646, 1133, note 186.

The oft-quoted statement used by people like Tik (although I do not know if he used it) is one in which Hitler says: " "our economic situation is such that we can only hold out for a few more years. . . . " but they fail to quote the next part: "All these favourable circumstances will no longer prevail in two or three years time. No one knows how much longer I shall live." (D.C. Watt, How War Came, 1989, p. 35.), this quotation shows that Hitler was not talking about an economic crises, but indeed, a crisis of limited time, and opportunity to act. More precisely he was talking about the fact that Germany had a limited amount of time in which they were (marginally) superior in armaments than those countries who were attempting to encircle Germany. At a certain point Hitler had nothing to gain by waiting. If he didn't act, he'd have been encircled for good and Germany's future would've been snuffed out.

Further contradicting this false economic narrative is the fact that Hitler never made economics the centrepiece for any of his reasoning to go to war:

When one turns to the arguments of the 'functionalists', one is confronted at once by their habit of using metaphors as though they were realities. Their view is that Hitler was driven to war by the 'internal dynamism' of the Nazi state, that is by the 'breakdown' of the German economy. They do produce a good deal of evidence to show that Germany was in a bad way in 1938-39. But behind the language they use ('internal dynamism', for example) there is a complicated and confused set of perceptions as to how the Nazi state worked as well as of the processes by which war came in 1939. [...] in the case of Hitler's policy decisions in 1939-39, the evidence linking the economic phenomena and conditions perceived by Dr. Mason and his school with the chain of decisions which led to the German attack on Poland in August 1939 is simply not there. To accept their theories in the absence of direct evidence is difficult enough; though it is true that there are considerable periods of time between October 1939 and September 1939 when direct evidence to Hitler's thought processes is entirely lacking. But on the key decisions which led to war in 1939, evidence as to what Hitler said, how he himself explained his ideas and defended them to those who were to execute them is clear and abounding.

What Hitler spoke about had little or nothing to do with Germany's immediate economic problems or with the internal confusion which underlay the so-called Nazi revolution. In his speeches to the military on 23 May, 22 August and in November 1939; in the records kept in the diaries of generals Halder and Jodl, his military advisers; in Ribbentrop's exposition of his foreign policy difficulties to the Italian ambassador to Berlin, Bernardo Attolico; in the account given by his interpreter, Paul Otto Schmidt, of Hitler's behaviour on the receipt of the British declaration of war, and in the numerous other indications of his views that we have, there is a great deal about strategic and military conditions as well as the usual genuflections towards Lebensraum, the purity of the German race and the need for ruthlessness in war. There is nothing about Germany's economic weakness. That Hitler was conscious of the economic factors so ably assembled and described by Dr. Mason is reasonable to suppose. But he said little or nothing about them.

D.C. Watt's Introduction to Mein Kampf (Pimlico, 1992), Pp. liii-liv.

Furthermore, Tik's video description is wrong from the first sentence when he says: "Why would Hitler go to war with Poland, knowing that Britain would declare war on Germany?". The reality is that Hitler had no clue Britain would declare war on Germany, he hadn't expected it in the slightest:

1800 hours:

Poles are delaying, tapped telephone conversation.

Decision against evacuation shows that he (Hitler) expects France and England will not take action.

Documents on German Foreign Policy, D Series, Vol. VII, Appendix I: Extracts from the notebook of Colonel General Halder August 14-September 3, 1939, Pp. 569.

Furthermore, as D.C. Watt briefly touched upon, the reception of the British Ultimatum was met by Hitler and his entourage with sadness, not with expectance or jubilation:

SCHMIDT: In the Reich Chancellery I gave it (the British ultimatum of Sept. 3, 1939) to Hitler, that is to say, I found Hitler in his office in conference with the Foreign minister and I translated the document into German for him. When I had completed my translation, there was at first silence.

DR. HORN: Was Hitler alone in the room?

SCHMIDT: No, as I said before, he was in his office with the Foreign Minister. And when I had completed my translation, both gentlemen were absolutely silent for about a minute. I could clearly see that this development did not suit them at all. For a while Hitler sat in his chair deep in thought and stared somewhat worriedly into space. Then he broke the silence with a rather abrupt question to the Foreign Minister, saying, "What shall we do now?" Thereupon they began to discuss the next diplomatic steps to be taken, whether this or that ambassador should be called, et cetera. I, of course, left the room since I had nothing more to d.0. When I entered the anteroom, I found assembled there-or rather I had already seen on my way in-some Cabinet members and higher officials, to whose questioning looks-they knew I had seen the British AmbassadorI had said only that there would be no second Munich. When I came out again, I saw by their anxious faces that my remark had been interpreted. When I then told them that I had just handed a British ultimatum to Hitler, a heavy silence fell on the room. The faces suddenly grew rather serious. I still remember that Goring, for instance, who was standing in front of me, turned round to me and said, "If we lose this war, then God help us." Goebbels was standing in a corner by himself and had a very serious, not to say depressed, This depressing atmosphere prevailed over all those present, and it naturally lives in my memory as something most remarkable for the frame of mind prevailing in the anteroom of the Reich Chancellery on the first day of the war.

DR. HORN: So you did nut have the Impression, then, that these men expected a declaration of war?

SCHMIDT: No, I did not have that impression.

IMT, vol. X, p. 200-201.

This account was seconded by someone else who knew Hitler as well. But unfortunately I'm having trouble remembering who it was to locate the source.

[Hektor]

I have seen a video recently on YT that claims, Hitler waged war in order not to annex Danzig which at that time was overwhelmingly German (plus it had strategic importance) but in order to expand to the East until he reached the Caucasus. The real goal behind all this was that the NSDAP intended to gain resources etc. because according to the video, the German economy was unsustainable and it would collapse. Another claim is that the German economy had deficits most of the time, so Hitler was forced to buy loans. In that way, by expanding to the East he would be able to pay these loans. Finally, the guy in the video adds a bit of Holocaust drama and says that except the eastern expansion, the Germans killed the Jews and stole their property to avoid bankruptcy. ....

That's an exercise in question begging. In effect expansion gave access to resources, but that doesn't prove that the war was motivated by this. The access to resources could just as well be secured by free trade with the countries that had those resources. In fact that would have been the economically most efficient way to do this. War means cost, tremendous cost and it binds resources for long, causes disruptions of your own economy in many often unpredictable ways.

That doesn't mean economics didn't play a role in this:
* Cutting off Eastern Prussia from the rump of Germany made it more difficult to supply coal and other goods to Eastern Prussia, while produce from Eastern Prussia would be hampered to make its way to the rump of Germany.
* The Western Allies tried to fiddle into Norway as to cut off Germany from supply of iron ore. So the Wehrmacht had to respond in a way to secure this again.
* The USSR threatened the oil fields in Romania. That means that the Axis had to strike pre-emptively as to secure the access to it.

The reason for offensive war is simply that Germany was in a strategically disadvantaged position, from which it couldn't simply "sit out" the conflict.

As for the finances. Yes NS-Germany did engage in deficit spending. But that is something ALL governments did engage in. For some strange reason to some this is only odd, when NS-Germany did it. In the case of NS it also had the character of reflation, meaning you add money to the economy, so people could spend that money for investment and consumption. The total debt-ratio of Germany was however lower than the one of other countries at the same time. It's even lower than today.

No, if they want to critique the economics, they must come with better arguments. They could e.g. look into the price-controls and perhaps intervention spiral, but that is more difficult to argue, so they stick to sweeping arguments that don't pass a fact check, when placed under scrutiny.