The Economy of Nazi Germany

[Lamprecht]

I was in a discussion with someone and the subject of the economy under Nazi Germany was brought up. Some people claim that Nazi Germany had an "Economic Miracle" and the greatest economy the world has seen, whereas others claim it was not a good economy but rather a disaster waiting to happen. And both groups cite various statistics to support their position. Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle, as discussed in the following video presentation, which I am listening to right now.

Video: The Nazi Economy by Cultured Thug


The video cites these two books as the primary sources:

Hitler's Revolution = by Richard Tedor
https://archive.org/details/HitlersRevo ... dTedor_383 or https://archive.is/SicoY

The Wages Of Destruction: The Making And Breaking Of The Nazi Economy - by Adam Tooze
https://archive.org/details/ToozeAdamTh ... aziEconomy or https://archive.is/0Duuw


Some of the criticisms I have been found was that the pre-war German economy had:

- Massive government deficits, often using 'mefo bills' were used to rebuild industries. If this money wasn't made up for it would cause long-term problems
- The agriculture industry did not improve, Germans had to import things like butter and milk
- Hitler did not get Germany out of the depression, but came in at the right time when it was pretty much already over
- Autobahn was not a Nazi policy but was created by the Weimar government but rejected as too socialist; videos and photos of its construction were also used as a propaganda tool, and supposedly it was also built largely with the labor of prisoners
- Germany was an economic powerhouse before WWI and in the 'golden years' of the Weimar republic, the Nazis weren't the cause of innovation but simply were in the right place at the right time

Feel free to post any information you have on the economy of National Socialist Germany. Primarily comments and criticisms of the economy before WWII started.

[Lamprecht]

Didn't notice this thread:

Hitler's Economic Miracle--the Greatest ever!
viewtopic.php?t=8347


From my research I do believe that overall the NSDAP had a positive impact on the German economy, for the most part. I am not quite certain whether or not it was a "Miracle" but in 1933, when Hitler came into power, things did get better in Germany. Here I will post some additional resources I have compiled on this topic. Some are critical, others praise the NSDAP, and a few seem to be somewhat neutral. The following links are in no particular order:


The Evening Post, Thursday, October 22, 1936:



How was Hitler able to affect such an economic miracle in Germany between 1933 and 1939?
https://www.academia.edu/37281663/How_w ... 3_and_1939
or https://archive.is/PZI6K


Hitler’s Economic Miracle - pridecomethbeforeafall
https://archive.is/hTgO2


PART 10: Nazism and the German economic miracle - By Henry C K Liu
https://archive.is/j7STn


Nazi economic recovery - Alpha History
https://archive.is/zSPBg


The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: German Economic Miracle - by David R. Henderson
https://archive.is/XwKdK


THE MIRACLE OF HITLER'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY - TomatoBubble.com
https://archive.is/j4E98


1933-1936 THE MIRACLE OF THE GERMAN RECOVERY - Smoloko
https://archive.is/pUyTk


How Hitler Tackled Unemployment And Revived Germany’s Economy - Mark Weber
https://archive.is/rAVLJ


The Nazi Economic Mirage - ZeroHedge
https://archive.is/y68bP


The German Economic Miracle - Investopedia
https://archive.is/LklfN


Nazi Economics - Reason.com
https://archive.is/QxEjg


The Germany Economy Under Hitler - GlobalSecurity.org
https://archive.is/9MqqP


The German Economic Miracle and the "Social Market Economy"
https://archive.is/XxyjL


Ben Bernanke Says “Hitler Was the Guy Who Got Economics Right in the 1930s”
https://archive.is/Xqrmt


The National Socialist Way Out of the Crisis - Truth no defence
https://archive.is/s77IV


Hitler vs. Bernanke - Counterpunch
https://archive.is/kWPKe


How Hitler Defied the International Bankers
https://archive.is/DeX2b


[PDF] The economic history of the Nazi regime - Adam Tooze
https://web.archive.org/web/20151017181 ... ading1.pdf


THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX: HOW A BANKRUPT GERMANY SOLVED ITS INFRASTRUCTURE PROBLEMS
https://archive.is/Vxcj6


[PDF] The First German Economic Miracle - Uncensored German History
https://web.archive.org/web/20150419152 ... rticle.pdf


[Book] The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938 (New Studies in Economic and Social History)
https://archive.is/GXGtc


[PDF] Employment Industry and Occupational Continuity in Germany: From the Nazi Regime to the Post-War Economic Miracle - Patrick A. Puhani
http://web.archive.org/web/201907010051 ... dp8372.pdf


The Omega File Chapter 25 – Germans Economic MIRACLE
https://archive.is/o4b0G


NAZI Germany: Economy (1933-45)
https://archive.is/TB6o9


WWII Myths – The German war economy was mismanaged
https://archive.is/TlO34


Guns and Butter – But No Margarine: The Impact of Nazi Agricultural and Consumption Policies on German Food Production and Consumption, 1933-38 - International Economic History Congress
https://archive.is/Epn6J


Industrial Investment in Nazi Germany: The Forgotten Wartime Boom - Department of Economics
https://archive.is/2Hkq2


Hitler, the Unemployed and Autarky - Some Observations After 50 Years
https://codoh.com/library/document/2075/


The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy - A Review
https://codoh.com/library/document/3156/


[Audio] National Socialist German Economic Policy - Christogenea
Part 1: https://archive.is/HhPsN
Part 2: https://mk.christogenea.org/podcasts/na ... -22nd-2013
Part 3: https://mk.christogenea.org/podcasts/na ... -29th-2013


[PDF] Against the Mainstream: Nazi privatization in 1930's Germany - Germa Bel
http://web.archive.org/web/201907010119 ... ap/EHR.pdf


[PDF] The Coining of “Privatization” and Germany’s National Socialist Party - Germa Bel
http://web.archive.org/web/201907010122 ... el2006.pdf


Macroeconomics in Germany: The forgotten lesson of Hjalmar Schacht
https://archive.is/U8qWj


[PDF] The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry
http://web.archive.org/web/201907010124 ... rner06.pdf


German economic policy (1939) - Wilhelm Bauer
https://archive.org/details/GermanEconomicPolicy or https://archive.is/ftSCL


David Irving - Chicago Glenview bank praises Adolf Hitler as a great economic leader
https://archive.is/LvETU

[Otium]

The German economy is a funny one because the information on it goes every which way. I'll try to be concise and suggest some sources I personally found interesting.

First of all, the idea that the Autobahn wasn't a Nazi policy is generally accepted, yet the Autobahn is no doubt a facet of German society put into practise by the National Socialists and subsequently used to 'prove' their drive to war. Richard Evans in his second volume declares that the autobahn had military use and ties it into Hitler's plan for war etc etc. I honestly cannot be bothered to go through the book and find the quote and page number. It's in there, people say that, just take my word for it. I will say that I'm perplexed at this dishonesty. On the one hand Hitler implemented the autobahn project which does count for something; yet this desperate struggle to minimize any achievement by Hitler and his movement it's claimed the plan wasn't his. However, I have come across some evidence to the contrary. In Landsberg prison Hitler thought about constructing a road system that was essentially the autobahn. . .

"He spent long hours worrying over the nation's' economic problems and even evolved (so he confided to Frank) a clever way of putting many unemployed back to work: he would construct a system of highways binding the nation closer together and would then mass-manufacture a small economical car that the little man could afford" - John Toland, Adolf Hitler (Anchor Books) pp. 187

In any case, it becomes clear that Hitler had independant thoughts about how to economically unite Germany and at the same time improve her. The Autobahn was one way he thought of.

So what do we accept? That Hitler WASN'T responsible for the autobahns conception yet bares all the blame for it's military capability? Give me a fucking break. These hack jobs want to have it both ways and they simply can't. Maybe this means that Weimar had war mongering intentions of their own? Although I doubt that narrative would be all that popular.

R.H.S. Stolfi has a good section on this.

The biographers have given us a rich, descriptive account of Hitler during the period, but none has presented an overarching interpretation that credibly and realistically accounts for the astounding tempo of the alleged international criminality and similar pace of the domestic synchronization of Germany with the Nazi movement. The biographers have presented a tired theme of international aggression in the 1930s and domestic totalitarianism. The theme is exhausted because it has been repeated by every great biographer and presents Hitler as an international criminal and domestic terrorizer of the leaders of Marxism and the entire, although diminutive, body of Jews in Germany The interpretation is exaggerated in the case of the international picture, accurate in the case of the internal violence, but leaves us with an understated picture of Hitler pulling the remaining approximate 99.5 percent of the population out of the economic depression. Hitler, for example, would personally turn the first spadeful of earth that symbolized the beginning of the construction of the Autobahnen on September 23, 1933 on a bank of the Main River near Frankfurt. These architecturally styled engineering masterpieces centered on great ribbons of concrete road surfaces and inclusive bridges. They would employ an average of one hundred thousand workers yearly, stimulate the motorization of Germany, and further German national unity Earlier, on February 11, 1933, only twelve days after having become chancellor, Hitler gave the opening address at the International Automobile and Motorcycle Exhibition on the Kaiserdamm in Berlin. In the speech, he would elevate the automobile industry to be the most important of the future and link it with a vast program of road construction. He would simultaneously advance the idea of a people's car for Germans—a Volksauto—and link it with the Autobahnen.

The most recent great biographer, Professor Ian Kershaw, would trivialize Hitler's role in this conceptualization and implementation of the motorization and superhighway-altering of Germany. He would maintain derisively that Hitler, “lacking as he did even the rudiments of economic theory,”1 could hardly have been called an economic innovator, and that his “propaganda instinct, not his economic know-how led him toward an initiative that both assisted the recovery of the economy (which was beginning to take place anyway) and caught the public imagination.”2 The great biographer thus would denigrate Hitler as being an economics cipher and operating largely with instinct for propaganda effect. But Hitler, alone and with remarkable vision, took advantage of the chance event of the Berlin international exhibition to deliver a psychological masterpiece that projected a motorized Germany complete with more and better roads. We see a distinctive Hitler, complete with lack of sense of proportion, unerring instinct, its alter ego, genius, and constant companion, luck. He would project the idea in February, push aside bureaucratic argument of the transport ministry and Reichsbahn (German Railways system), and create a German Motorways Enterprise headed by Dr. Fritz Todt answerable by the end of November 1933 only to himself.

In what was an outsized undertaking, we have an opportunity to test the conventional wisdom's interpretation of Hitler. It is difficult to assign depravity and evil to Hitler for his conceptualization and implementation of the building of a Reich motorways system. He saw the advertising of such a system so early as the second month of 1933 as a psychological tour de force to restore morale in Germany and boost his own popularity It is difficult to the point of impossibility, however, to assign popularity and implied power as the primary motives for the Reich motorways. Since we are attempting to place Hitler within the context of his actual life rather than within a preconception of meanness, it is easy to discover his adolescent project of the underground rail system through Linz. The presence of transportation systems in both projects is eye-catching but largely incidental. Once our eye has been caught, however, we see two identically functioning Hitlers. In the younger one, we detect an inspired vision of an architecturally perfect Linz with everything else subordinated to the vision—cost, international rail line, workers’ flats, and so on. In the adult Hitler, we detect an inspired vision of a civil engineering architectural masterpiece intended not only to be the psychological basis for the social motorization of Germany but also a visual movement to its glory.

Hitler would claim, for example, to have already determined before he came to power “that immediately [after] the government fell into our hands I would begin the preliminary work for the production of a car whose price would enable it to become a real means of transport for the great mass of the people. By this means the motor-car would at last cease to be an instrument of class division.”3 And in utterly vintage Hitler, echoing his stress on heroic proportion as necessary for heroic action, he would exclaim in a speech that “in [the] case of the German people there is a demand not for two to three hundred thousand, but for six to seven million motor-cars!”4 This social motorization and these autos would be possible only with an enlarged road system, which in turn would be centered on the new superhighways. Hitler would point out later, as the Reich motorways project had developed by the end of 1937, that “the system of Autobahnen is the largest building undertaking in the world and already, with a displacement of 240 million cubic meters of earth by far exceeds the building achievement of the Panama Canal.”5 We see little evil in the project, although Kershaw would interpret him as exploiting the transitory psychological effects of announced motorization and super highway construction and then, by some dark miracle, as sending the right signs to a gloomy automobile industry. We thereby miss the more substantial Hitler who would not only retain his propaganda instincts but would also be driven to accumulate another mighty achievement.

And the automobiles and Autobahnen cannot even be connected with the potential for evil in rearmament. Even though some lesser biographers and greater historians would link automobiles and superhighways with military purpose, the German Army would advance against France so late as 1940 with only fourteen motorized divisions out of a total in the attack of 120, that is, it would remain largely horse drawn and foot marching. And the same army would transport itself about Europe by railway, in moves of any significant distance, for the entire war. For Hitler, automobiles and superhighways represented a grand project of social change and heroic architectural dimension that would add up to inspired achievement. None of this proves that Hitler was a nice person, but all of this warns us that he moved from inspiration to inspiration at the outer edge of reality for all others. And as concerns how he fit his architectural masterwork into his artistic vision of the world, he would comment in an unguarded moment that the Autobahnen would become his Parthenon. - R.H.S. Stolfi, Hitler Beyond Evil and Tyranny (Prometheus Books) pp. 278-281

The next claim. Most often cited, or at least repeated is that the National Socialists managed to achieve based on some flow of the period already coming to it's conclusion in which the depression was lifting. Something along those lines. Historian H.W. Koch has completely rejected this idea. You can read the quote and examine the sources to make up your mind.

It is often argued that in these elections the electoral reservoir of the NSDAP had been exhausted and that from now on its path could lead only downhill.35 This argument remains an unsubstantiated hypothesis. With equal validity it can be argued by comparing the trends of all the Reichstag elections of the Weimar Republic that the support for the NSDAP was levelling out and would in future elections have remained very high, though not overwhelming. This argument of the inevitable decline of the voters'
support is frequently linked with the other argument that once Hitler had become chancellor Germany had already overcome the depths of the recession and Hitler benefited from the general upturn of the world economy, an argument equally devoid of any basis in fact. While never cutting as deep as in Germany, in Britain the recession on the whole continued almost until the Second World War. In the USA Roosevelt's 'New Deal' temporarily alleviated the situation in some sectors, but the recession continued with great severity until the Second World War. - H.W. Koch, Aspects of the Third Reich, pp. 49-50

Koch's source here is

IfZ-Zeugenschrifttum ED I - Liebmann, p. 44. General Liebmann's manuscript notes.

You can also find Aspects of the Third Reich online here https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=AE119350B04AA16D4D1E8A9099108F26

On the agriculture industry you'll notice that in cultured thugs video, he quotes Tooze and talks of the horrible harvests Germany suffered in the mid 1930s due to the weather, the worst harvests Germany had suffered in decades. This mean't they needed to import grain because they simply didn't have enough, this was out of their control and cannot be held against a government that had barely been around for less than half a decade at that point.

Also, Germans simply decided to move out of the rural areas and work factory jobs regardless of the governments push to be more agrarian.


There are some other points i'd like to briefly point out and reading recommendations for you to pursue.

I'd like to post another quote by Koch on the economic determinist assertion.

This determinist thesis has now been extended to mean that by I936 the German economy had arrived at the crossroads at which Schacht’s policy of expedients had to be abandoned, the alternative facing Hitler being a return to the ordered channels of the international economy. Since the basic premise of Hitler’s policy was the extension of Lebensraum, such a return would tend to frustrate any rapid mobilization of Germany’s economic and military resources necessary for such a course. Consequently, Hitler had not only to continue the course of expedients but indeed to endeavour to extend it on a scale far wider than practised hitherto, with the result that, metaphorically speaking, cheques were drawn on non-existent capital, or more correctly the proceeds of living space were used before this space had actually been obtained. This seems plausible enough, but the theory is as good or as bad as any other. Its inherent major problem is the unsatisfactory state of the evidence cited, mostly polemical in nature, and the almost complete lack of figures. The one (but certainly not definitive) survey whose conclusions are backed up by relatively reliable figures, shows no evidence of an economic crisis between I936 and I939; moreover it reduces to its true proportions the myth, purpose- fully and apparently very successfully put about by Hitler, of the extent of German rearmament. The propounders of the thesis of inevitability of war for economic reasons interpret the Hossbach notes as being the military and political equivalent of Hitler’s Four-Year Plan of I936 in the economic field. This equation is juxtaposed with excerpts from Hitler’s Table Talk of I942-3. Apart from demonstrating that the method of juxtaposition is no satisfactory substitute for reliable and unequivocal evidence, since the Hossbach notes deal only with Austria and Czechoslovakia, they are irrelevant to Hitler’s concept of Lebensraum as such. Secondly, these territories hardly add-and this was clear to see in I937-8-sufficient resources to cope with a long-term economic crisis. This, of course, is provided such a serious crisis did exist, which is itself more than doubtful. – H.W. Koch, Hitler and the Origins of the Second World War. Second Thoughts on the status of some of the Documents, pp. 134

Kenneth Galbraith on the Nazi economy

"The Nazi economic policy, it should be noted, was an ad hoc response to what seemed over-riding circumstance. The unemployment position was desperate. So money was borrowed and people put to work. When rising wages and prices threatened stability, a price ceiling was imposed. Although there had been much discussion of such policy in pre-Hitler Germany, it seems doubtful if it was highly influential. Hitler and his cohorts were not a bookish log. Nevertheless the elimination of unemployment in Germany during the Great Depression without inflation - and with initial reliance on essentially civilian activities - was a signal accomplishment. It has rarely been praised and not much remarked. The notion that Hitler could do no good extends to his economics as it does, more plausibly, to all else." - Money: Whence it came, where it went" by John Kenneth Galbraith (First Published 1975), Page 237

Also from Galbraith

"By the mid '30s there was also in existence an advanced demonstration of the Keynesian system. This was the economic policy of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. It involved large-scale borrowing for public expenditures and at first this was principally for civilian works - railroads, canals and the Autobahnen. The result was a far more effective attack on unemployment than in any other industrial country. By 1935, German unemployment minimal. "Hitler had already found how to cure unemployment before
Keynes had finished explaining why it occurred." In 1936, as prices and wages came under upward pressure, Hitler took the further step of combining an expansive employment policy with comprehensive price controls. The Nazi economic policy, it should be noted, was an ad hoc response to what seemed overriding circumstance. The unemployment position was desperate. So money was borrowed and people put to work. When rising wages and prices threatened stability, a price ceiling was imposed. Although there had been much discussion of such policy in pre-Hitler Germany, it seems doubtful if it was highly influential. Hitler and his cohorts were not a bookish lot. Nevertheless the elimination of unemployment in Germany during the Great Depression without inflation — and with initial reliance on essentially civilian activities — was a signal accomplishment. It has rarely been praised and not much remarked. The notion that Hitler could do no good extends to his economics as it does, more plausibly, to all else.

Note 16: ". . . the Nazis were . . . more successful in curing the economic ills of the 1930s [than the United States]. They reduced unemployment and stimulated industrial production faster than the Americans did and, considering their resources, handled their monetary and trade problems more successfully, certainly more imaginatively. This was partly because the Nazis employed deficit financing on a larger scale ... By 1936 the depression was substantially over in Germany, - Money: Whence it came, where it went" by John Kenneth Galbraith (First Published 1975), Page 225-226

And an interesting point from a paper I recommend.

"Historians reluctant to credit the Nazis with any economic program have argued that Hitler rode the crest of an autonomous "natural" upswing in the German economy, that Hitler reaped benefits of work-creation initiatives of his predecessors Franz von Papen and General Kurt von Schleicher, and/or that the Nazis disguised rearmament as "work-creation" programs in 1933/34. Years of debate over the timing and amount spent by the Nazis on rearmament have raised doubts that the Labor market recovery of 1933-35 was induced by a "rearmament boom." The debate highlighted the difficulty in defining "rearmament." Wolfram Fischer, Hans-Erich Volkmann, Wilhelm Deist, and Dieter Petzina contended that early projects carried out under Nazi work-creation programs were in fact direct or indirect rearmament projects. Reich defence minister Werner von Blomberg noted, the Wehrmacht's requirements were not considered in the early allocation of RM 1 billion from the June 1, 1933, Reinhardt work-creation program. He expressed willingness to accept that situation, but asked for RM 13.5 million from the Spende zur Forderung der nationalen Arbeit, a fund financed through "voluntary" contributions from the German people. The funds would be used for "railway construction in areas with poor transportation." Military expenditure, however defined, was relatively low during the key recovery years, 1933 through 1935. Once the upswing was well under way, rearmament contributed substantially to sustaining it." Richard J. Overy, moreover, has cautioned that "not all rearmament expenditure by any means went directly into industry and productive employment. Military expenditure is not the same thing as expenditure on armaments." Overy estimates that of a total "military expenditure" of RM 4.8 billion from 1933 to 1935, only about RM 600 million was spent on "military investment" in 1933 and 1934, and another RM 1.9 billion in 1935." - Fantasy and Reality in Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933-1936 by Dan P. Silverman, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), Pages 115-116

You can read it for free online here https://www.jstor.org/stable/2124816?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents or copy and paste this link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2124816 into http://sci-hub.tw/ and download the paper for free.

Books and publications you should read are as follows.

1. Explaining Hitler's Germany by John Hiden and J. E. Farquharson (read the citations in this book too)
2. The Plough and the Swastika: The NSDAP and Agriculture in Germany 1928–45 by J. E. Farquharson (read short review here https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/54/1/133/2567930?redirectedFrom=fulltext )
3. National Socialist Rule in Germany by Norbert Frei
4. Goring by Richard Overy
5. War and Economy in the Third Reich by Richard Overy https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=9756BEA6271F88F3DB0849540BDC7C57
6. The Nazi Economic Recovery by Richard Overy https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=595E3D9C6EAD7287A7C74E818EA85B34
7. Germany's Economic Preparations for War by Burton H Klein http://booksdescr.org/item/index.php?md5=D137CD5328BA1D6FE196873C9BB2FC17
8. The 12 Year Reich by Richard Grunberger
9. Big Business and Private Property Under the Nazis by Arthur Schweitzer
Pamphlets published in English by the NSDAP explaining aspects of the German system.
1. German Economic Policy bu Wilhelm Bauerhttp://aryanism.net/downloads/books/wilhelm-bauer/german-economic-policy.pdf
2. German Labour Service by Fritz Edel http://aryanism.net/downloads/books/fritz-edel/german-labour-service.pdf https://archive.org/details/GermanLabourService
3. Social Welfare in Germany by Werner Reher http://www.freepdf.info/index.php?post/Reher-Werner-Social-welfare-in-Germany
4. German Law and Legislation by Dr. Erich Schinnerer http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books_added2009-2/GermanLawAndLegislation.pdf http://ihr.org/other/schinnerer1938law
5. German Education Today by Theodor Wilhelm and Gerhard Gräfe https://archive.org/details/GermanEducationToday_201905

[Lamprecht]

Thanks for the book recommendations.

I did cite a few good articles in this thread on the technological achievements of the Third Reich:

Theft of intellectual property and patents by the allies; Third Reich technological advancement
viewtopic.php?t=12416

As for the Autobahn, it really is just a case of people refusing to accept that Hitler did anything of value. They are truly motivated by ideology. Examples:
- The myth of Hitler's role in building the autobahn: https://archive.is/MBDHV
- How Hitler Stole the Autobahn: https://archive.is/w6ck9

I was not even aware that people were claiming that Hitler "invented" the idea of an interconnected highway system. It seems pretty intuitive: Roads had been around for a long time, cars were invented and becoming more and more common. I'm sure plenty of people thought "Hey, wouldn't it be nice if we had some really big roads from one major city to the other?" Actually getting the workers and materials required to build this massive project, on the other hand, is the feat. Similar to how we all credit the Wright brothers with flight, rather than the first caveman to watch a bird fly through the sky and think "wow, wouldn't it be nice if I could do that?"

Wikipedia gives the following figures of Autobahn length by year:
1935 - 108
1936 - 1,086
1937 - 2,010
1938 - 3,046
1939 - 3,300
1940 - 3,736
1950 - 2,128
1955 - 2,187
1960 - 2,551
1965 - 3,204
1970 - 4,110
1975 - 5,742
1980 - 7,292
1985 - 8,198
1990 - 8,822
1995 - 11,143
2000 - 11,515
2005 - 12,174
2010 - 12,813
2015 - 12,949
2016 - 12,993
2017 - 12,996

[Otium]

Thanks for the book recommendations.

I did cite a few good articles in this thread on the technological achievements of the Third Reich:

Theft of intellectual property and patents by the allies; Third Reich technological advancement
viewtopic.php?t=12416

As for the Autobahn, it really is just a case of people refusing to accept that Hitler did anything of value. They are truly motivated by ideology. Examples:
- The myth of Hitler's role in building the autobahn: https://archive.is/MBDHV
- How Hitler Stole the Autobahn: https://archive.is/w6ck9

I was not even aware that people were claiming that Hitler "invented" the idea of an interconnected highway system. It seems pretty intuitive: Roads had been around for a long time, cars were invented and becoming more and more common. I'm sure plenty of people thought "Hey, wouldn't it be nice if we had some really big roads from one major city to the other?" Actually getting the workers and materials required to build this massive project, on the other hand, is the feat. Similar to how we all credit the Wright brothers with flight, rather than the first caveman to watch a bird fly through the sky and think "wow, wouldn't it be nice if I could do that?"

Wikipedia gives the following figures of Autobahn length by year:
1935 - 108
1936 - 1,086
1937 - 2,010
1938 - 3,046
1939 - 3,300
1940 - 3,736
1950 - 2,128
1955 - 2,187
1960 - 2,551
1965 - 3,204
1970 - 4,110
1975 - 5,742
1980 - 7,292
1985 - 8,198
1990 - 8,822
1995 - 11,143
2000 - 11,515
2005 - 12,174
2010 - 12,813
2015 - 12,949
2016 - 12,993
2017 - 12,996

All good. To be honest this is a topic that's interested me for a long time, doing the research by myself I find to be quite daunting.

I checked out your other thread and I'm very happy that somebody has put together some information about these achievements. However, the archive links aren't available online, it would be great if you could update them or repost archive.org links. Thanks!

[Otium]

I was taking a glance at the zero hedge article you listed https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-07/nazi-economic-mirage and some stuff struck me as odd.

He does admit the miracle was real, I think it would be foolish to deny it

Hitler’s policies are still viewed to this day as a great example of how unprecedented government intervention fixed a dire economic problem. In short, Hitler laid a golden egg and produced an economic miracle.

As early as 1933, even before any miracle could be seen, the New York Times had nothing but praise for his ambitions, according to the following front page headline:

“There is at least one official voice in Europe that expresses understanding of the methods and motives of President Roosevelt—the voice of Germany, as represented by Chancellor Adolf Hitler.”

For sure, some of Hitler’s policies made a lot of sense. Building up the country’s infrastructure, which was so vital to a modern industrial economy, proved to be a winning bet. German workers could now afford cars to drive in the new roads, as well as other modern conveniences. Economic activity and incomes responded accordingly. That Weimar Republic feeling of uncertainty and malaise finally subsided. And the dramatic increase in fertility rates during the Nazi years also provided a boost (after all, babies can promote consumption). So in a sense there was no mirage here, the growth was real.

But he also says some stuff I find rather baseless.

While farmers benefited from the elimination of debt and some aid from the government – such as fixating prices and production to promote that elusive autarky, their ability to finance crop expansions and purchases of new equipment was also reduced. The sector saw a continuous outflow of workers, who were now being employed in all the other government sponsored projects and the military.

As a result, agricultural productivity suffered and shortages of food developed across the country. In response, the Nazis implemented food rationing – which would remain in place until the end of the war. In 1937, annual consumption of wheat bread, meat, bacon, milk, eggs, fish, vegetables, sugar, fruit and beer had fallen to levels comparable to a decade earlier (only rye bread, cheese and potatoes had increased). Malnourishment was starting to become a real problem amongst German workers, in farms and factories across the country.

In typical fashion, rather than blaming his own policies, Hitler believed that this situation resulted from a lack of “space to live” for his people. All major European powers had access to vast territories in Africa and elsewhere. The US had a huge continent at its disposal. But not Germany, who had lost out in WWI and was now confined to its diminished borders.

It's true the agricultural sectors saw many people leave, this in itself shows the flexibility of the regime, the National Socialists weren't forcing anyone into these agricultural industries even though Himmler for example supposedly tried to set up old medieval communities. In Norbert Freis book he mentioned how the Germans were more attracted to higher paying factory work, being able to see the cities and be apart of a larger economic project. I can't see how this is supposed to be a bad thing.

In any case, he claims agricultural productivity suffered and rations were in place. This isn't entirely untrue, it's just not an accurate view of the big picture.

From Tooze's 'Wages of Destruction'

Already in the summer of 1935 there had been talk of the need to introduce ration cards for bread. For obvious reasons, this was deemed to be politically unacceptable. Instead, the RNS resorted to an organized programme of substitution through which bread flour was diluted with maize meal and even potato starch.65 In relation to meat and butter the regime was more forceful. To dole out the scarce supply of butter, a discreet system of rationing was introduced in the autumn of 1935, in the form of customer lists kept by the retail outlets. Similarly, the meat supply could not be completely insulated from the impact of the disastrous potato failure in 1935. To ensure that there were sufficient potatoes for human consumption, the RNS culled the pig population and pushed through a sharp increase in the price of pork products. In Berlin, the price of cooked ham was raised by almost 30 per cent between 1934 and 1936. From 1936 onwards the RNS also supplemented the German food balance through imports. More than a million tons of grain were imported in 1936. In 1937 imports rose to in excess of 1.6 million tons. In 1936 there can be no doubt that this was a measure of last resort dictated by the two years of poor harvests and the exhaustion of stocks.66 ----From 1937 onwards German production was more than adequate to meet domestic demand. Imports were used, not to support current consumption, but to rebuild national grain stocks, which by 1939 were sufficient to cover the population's bread supply for an entire year. ----RNS. At no point was the German population threatened with real food shortages.69 The 'shortages' of meat and butter were due not to a collapse in supply, but to a huge surge in demand, especially from working-class consumers. Newly re-employed Germans with money in their pockets simply did not want to eat the austere vegetarian diet publicly espoused by the Nazi leadership with their Sunday lunches of vegetable stew. [i]- Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pp. 193[/i]

In general, however, a wholesale increase in food prices was ruled out by fear of provoking the kind of public outrage that had shown itself in 1934. It was this political freezing of the price system that created the appearance of shortages, forcing the RNS to resort to more or less overt forms of rationing. It was not until 1938, with the appearance of real supply problems in dairy farming, that the regime finally raised the prices paid to German farmers for milk. But even then the increase was not passed on to consumers. The price increase thus helped to stimulate production but did nothing to restrain demand. - Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pp. 194

When we bear in mind the disastrous situation of world agriculture in the 1930sit is clear that German farmers, in fact, enjoyed a historically unprecedented level of protection and it is hardly surprising that this came at a price. In return for the exclusion of foreign competition from home markets, peasant smallholders had to accept comprehensive regulation and control. Farming in Germany, as in Europe generally, from the 1930s onwards resembled less and less a market-driven industry and more and more a strange hybrid of private ownership and state planning. The true story is told by the level of prices paid to German farmers compared to those that German farmers would have received if they had been exposed to the full force of foreign competition. On this basis the record is completely unambiguous. Though it is true that grain producers clearly enjoyed a larger margin of protection than dairy farmers, for all major types of farm produce the prices paid to German farmers under National Socialism were at least twice those prevailing on world markets. Of course, under Schacht's New Plan, German industry enjoyed blanket protection as well. So the really telling development after 1933 was the sharp improvement in the terms of trade between agriculture and industry. During the Depression, agricultural prices had fallen more than industrial prices. After 1933, the 'scissors' between industrial and agricultural prices shut abruptly. Agricultural prices rose more rapidly than industrial prices and, again, this was out of line with developments in global markets, where agriculture continued to lag behind. The promise Hitler made on the night of 30 January 1933 was to restore the economic fortunes of the German peasantry within four years and the RNS certainly made good on that pledge. According to figures calculated by Germany's most authoritative economic research agency, total farm income, of which animal products accounted for more than 60 per cent, rose by almost 14 per cent in 1933-4 and by another 11.5 per cent in 1934-5. At the same time the burden of taxes and interest payments on agriculture fell significantly.73 When we allow for the general deflation in prices, increases in money incomes on this scale more than made up for the Depression. The situation would have been even better if it had not been for the bad weather and poor harvest in 1934. - Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, pp. 195

It becomes abundantly clear that what was written in Zero Hedge just simply isn't true, or is too simple to be taken seriously. I looked for supposed starvation and or malnourishment without finding anything, and if this were true it wouldn't have been the regimes fault as we've seen harvests played a significant part in the economy in this regard.

The part in the article about Hitler's need for living space being portrayed as some colossal lie created by him to mask his economic failings is just absurd. Tooze in his book makes plain that Germany had insufficient space (see the cultured thug video for the quote on this) and this was a common view in continental Europe. If it were so untrue there's no way Hitler would've gotten away with it. Not only that, but you'd need a significant amount of evidence to prove this blatant lie but fourth by Durden.

[Otium]

I've come back to actually request information this time. Does anyone have any details regarding Marxism claims that Fascism and specifically National Socialist Germany was 'the final stages of Capitalism'? The classic claim that Germany was a Capitalist puppet which loved usury and big business etc.

[Lamprecht]

Does anyone have any details regarding Marxism claims that Fascism and specifically National Socialist Germany was 'the final stages of Capitalism'?

The Marxists are quite silly. They have a few decent criticisms of capitalism, but it ends there: their proposed solutions are inevitibly worse. Communism is theoretical and claims to be characterized by collective ownership of property, and organizing labor for the common advantage of everyone. Think about a supermarket full of food, and you just go there and only grab what you need so everyone else can have some, but it's all free. Ha! Also think about spending a decade of your life learning to become a surgeon and yet not getting any higher pay than a person who becomes a low-level programmer, just sitting at a comfortable desk, low stress, taking it slow and only working half the time. What's the point?

Marxism also advocates for capitalism to be overthrown by a revolution of the proletariat (working class). Of course, this is fantasy. A self-described communist will say "True Communism has never been tried" because no government has just dissolved itself and give up control of 'the means of production' to the public. Marx described multiple stages:

1 - Primitive Communism; prehistory, nobody owns anything, everyone shares everything in a commune. Think paleolithic, hunter gatherer tribes

2 - Slave societies; Ancient societies with large slave populations, like Rome and Greece

3 - Fuedalism; Middle Ages, with nobles and peasants

4 - Capitalism; Economic competition, Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The Bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat, and that is the source of their wealth

5 - Socialism; Government takes over the 'means of production' and the upper class no longer exploit the lower class. All the factories, supermarkets, and everything like that is owned by the government.

6 - (final stage) Communism; There is no more government or classes. The "Proletariat" violently overthrows the bourgeoisie and then everyone shares everything and is equal.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"
Meaning: Voluntarily give to society what you can, and take only what you need. There is really no evidence this sort of thing worked at all, except maybe in the stage 1, small tribal societies of a few hundred people.

Ultimately, Fascism and National Socialism were responses to Communism. Adolf Hitler saw communism, which he called "Jewish Bolshevism" as a tactic, rather than a system. The proposed goal of the Communists was to abolish the state and create an egalitarian paradise. What actually happened in Europe, as Hitler saw it, was that the Bolsheviks (who were disproportionately atheistical Jews) told the masses of people (Proletariat) that they would abolish the state and create a paradise as a false pretense to trick them into killing all the rich, oppressive "Bourgeoisie" so that the communists could establish themselves as the new leaders of the society. This is why every successful communist revolution resulted in the ruling class being totally exterminated or driven from the country.

I guess when these communists say "Fascism is the final stage of Capitalism" they are saying "After this, it's communism!" I guess? Can you find anyone that has made this claim?

I have found this:
Are we in the final stages of capitalism?
http://greenreview.blogspot.com/2017/02 ... alism.html

[flimflam]

https://www.quora.com/Were-Hitler-and-the-Nazis-responsible-for-Germany-s-economic-rise-after-the-Great-Depression-If-so-how

When Hitler came to power the German economy was in shambles and France occupied the Ruhr, the main center of Germany’s iron, steel, and coal production. His first goal was to restore Germany’s economy and he was successful, read Ellen Brown’s essay:

Thinking Outside The Box: How A Bankrupt Germany Solved Its Infrastructure Problems - http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bankrupt-germany.php

Or so it seemed. Hitler and the National Socialists, who came to power in 1933, thwarted the international banking cartel by issuing their own money. In this they took their cue from Abraham Lincoln, who funded the American Civil War with government-issued paper money called "Greenbacks."

…

Within two years, the unemployment problem had been solved and the country was back on its feet. It had a solid, stable currency, no debt, and no inflation, at a time when millions of people in the United States and other Western countries were still out of work and living on welfare.

……

Although Hitler has rightfully gone down in infamy in the history books, he was quite popular with the German people, at least for a time. Stephen Zarlenga suggests in The Lost Science of Money that this was because he temporarily rescued Germany from English economic theory — the theory that money must be borrowed against the gold reserves of a private banking cartel rather than issued outright by the government.

Economic policies and benefits - http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesi ... rint.shtml

The good life in Nazi Germany

Despite the loss of political and religious freedom, life improved in Germany for many ordinary people who were prepared to 'toe the line' and look the other way.


Hitler opening a new Volkswagen factory.

Everybody had a job, and a wage. To people who had been unemployed and starving, 'work and bread' was a wonderful blessing worth every civil liberty they lost.

The Nazis set up KdF (Strength through Joy), which gave workers rewards for their work - evening classes, theatre trips, picnics, and even free holidays.

The Nazis devised a scheme to allow workers to buy a Volkswagen Beetle car for a small weekly payment.

The autobahns improved transport and travel.

People appreciated the public works - eg new schools and hospitals.

The streets were safe and there was no crime.

Germany was strong and successful in world affairs.

Nazi rallies provided colour and fun.

Nazi Youth groups provided activities and holidays for young people.

Nazi ideology gave people hope and confidence.

More info from the BBC .. BBC Bitesize - GCSE History - Life for workers in Nazi Germany - CCEA - Revision 6 - https://www.bbc.com/education/guides/zcj6y4j/revision/6

2. Strength Through Joy (KdF)

This scheme was set up in November 1933.

Its aims were to make workers support Hitler by offering them rewards and to keep them occupied outside the workplace with organised leisure activities. It was run by Dr Ley.

Activities and rewards included:

evening classes;

theatre trips;

picnics;

broad range of mass participation sporting events;

very cheap or free holidays. There were walking holidays in Switzerland and skiing holidays in Bavaria. Two big cruise liners were built to sail people around the Canary Islands for only two weeks’ wages.

The KdF also started a savings scheme for workers who wanted to buy the Volkswagen Beetle, known as the “People’s Car”. They were to save 5 marks per week until 750 marks had been paid into the scheme.

[Otium]

Does anyone have any details regarding Marxism claims that Fascism and specifically National Socialist Germany was 'the final stages of Capitalism'?

The Marxists are quite silly. They have a few decent criticisms of capitalism, but it ends there: their proposed solutions are inevitibly worse. Communism is theoretical and claims to be characterized by collective ownership of property, and organizing labor for the common advantage of everyone. Think about a supermarket full of food, and you just go there and only grab what you need so everyone else can have some, but it's all free. Ha! Also think about spending a decade of your life learning to become a surgeon and yet not getting any higher pay than a person who becomes a low-level programmer, just sitting at a comfortable desk, low stress, taking it slow and only working half the time. What's the point?

Marxism also advocates for capitalism to be overthrown by a revolution of the proletariat (working class). Of course, this is fantasy. A self-described communist will say "True Communism has never been tried" because no government has just dissolved itself and give up control of 'the means of production' to the public. Marx described multiple stages:

1 - Primitive Communism; prehistory, nobody owns anything, everyone shares everything in a commune. Think paleolithic, hunter gatherer tribes

2 - Slave societies; Ancient societies with large slave populations, like Rome and Greece

3 - Fuedalism; Middle Ages, with nobles and peasants

4 - Capitalism; Economic competition, Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The Bourgeoisie exploit the proletariat, and that is the source of their wealth

5 - Socialism; Government takes over the 'means of production' and the upper class no longer exploit the lower class. All the factories, supermarkets, and everything like that is owned by the government.

6 - (final stage) Communism; There is no more government or classes. The "Proletariat" violently overthrows the bourgeoisie and then everyone shares everything and is equal.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"
Meaning: Voluntarily give to society what you can, and take only what you need. There is really no evidence this sort of thing worked at all, except maybe in the stage 1, small tribal societies of a few hundred people.

Ultimately, Fascism and National Socialism were responses to Communism. Adolf Hitler saw communism, which he called "Jewish Bolshevism" as a tactic, rather than a system. The proposed goal of the Communists was to abolish the state and create an egalitarian paradise. What actually happened in Europe, as Hitler saw it, was that the Bolsheviks (who were disproportionately atheistical Jews) told the masses of people (Proletariat) that they would abolish the state and create a paradise as a false pretense to trick them into killing all the rich, oppressive "Bourgeoisie" so that the communists could establish themselves as the new leaders of the society. This is why every successful communist revolution resulted in the ruling class being totally exterminated or driven from the country.

I guess when these communists say "Fascism is the final stage of Capitalism" they are saying "After this, it's communism!" I guess? Can you find anyone that has made this claim?

I have found this:
Are we in the final stages of capitalism?
http://greenreview.blogspot.com/2017/02 ... alism.html

I can indeed think of a few authors.

Franz Leopold Neumann the 'political socialist' and author of the widely influential "Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism" https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.236979/page/n2 I've found this book in the bibliography of most books i've looked at, even if it's only sourced once or twice.

The Marxist and also widely influential, more so than Neumann, 'Historian' Timothy Mason. Who
wrote a 'ground breaking' study 'Social Policy in the Third Reich' (Only available in German online it seems) https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=DE26D039928F6D95D7FDAF5F40681772

And another book https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=01D7EAC38095C30D922310B267C1B3AD

And maybe the Marxist 'historian' Arthur Rosenberg and his essay 'Fascism as a Mass Movement' https://www.academia.edu/25573087/Fascism_as_a_Mass-Movement_Translators_Introduction. Though perhaps he doesn't say this, in any case, he's the last Marxist 'historian' I know of in this regard, so I figured i'd include him anyway.

[Otium]

Here are some other books and a great paper.

The Magic of Money by Hjalmar Schacht

https://archive.org/details/SchachtHjalmarTheMagicOfMoney.o

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Economic Recovery Of Germany 1933-1938 by C.W. Guillebaud

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.175060/page/n3

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Myth of the Big Business-Nazi Axis by Kerry R. Bolton

https://www.inconvenienthistory.com/7/3/3434

[Lamprecht]

Here is a good overview of the financial policies of the Third Reich, by Peter Myers. It was originally in a MS Word .doc file but internet archive gives a convenient HTML version.

The Finance Policy of Nazi Germany: Feder, Schacht and Hitler
https://archive.is/2hG4L or http://mailstar.net/Feder-Schacht-Hitler.doc

(1) The Finance Policy of Nazi Germany: Feder, Schacht and Hitler
(2) Hitler sided with Schacht, sidelined Feder under Schmitt, an Insurance magnate
(3) Hitler repudiates Feder, before gaining power, in HITLER SPEAKS
(4) Schacht battled against Feder; MEFO bills paid interest - Stephen Zarlenga
(5) British Empire left the Gold Standard by 1931
(6) Gold-holding US & Britain destabilized Germany's "Fiat" economy - Robert de Fremery
- by Peter Myers, November 16, 2014

[Otium]

With regard to the statistical information the objection may be raised that, being official, it cannot be relied upon. To this I would reply, in the first place, that the deliberate manipulation of official statistics would be an administrative impossibility in Germany, where the whole economic system is based on the existence of accurate quantitative data. A moment's reflection will show that it is not practicable to have two sets of figures - one for publication and another and different set for official use only. In the second place, no one could handle for months on end the statistics, official and otherwise, of a country, covering a number of years, without gaining a clear impression of their general consistency and reliability. Earlier figures are in fact being revised all the time, sometimes upwards and sometimes downwards, and there are often discrepancies between different estimates for the same series. These make the task of research worker more difficult, but certainly do not point to officially-inspired tampering with the true figures. My own conclusion is that the statistical material provided in Germany is as accurate as that of any other country.

Pp. v-vi

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.175060/page/n5/mode/2up

[Hektor]

Here is a good overview of the financial policies of the Third Reich, by Peter Myers. It was originally in a MS Word .doc file but internet archive gives a convenient HTML version.

The Finance Policy of Nazi Germany: Feder, Schacht and Hitler
https://archive.is/2hG4L or http://mailstar.net/Feder-Schacht-Hitler.doc

(1) The Finance Policy of Nazi Germany: Feder, Schacht and Hitler
(2) Hitler sided with Schacht, sidelined Feder under Schmitt, an Insurance magnate
(3) Hitler repudiates Feder, before gaining power, in HITLER SPEAKS
(4) Schacht battled against Feder; MEFO bills paid interest - Stephen Zarlenga
(5) British Empire left the Gold Standard by 1931
(6) Gold-holding US & Britain destabilized Germany's "Fiat" economy - Robert de Fremery
- by Peter Myers, November 16, 2014

The information one gets on National Socialist Economy is often contradictory. But then NS wasn't that much a monolithic block as Marxism-Leninism Was.

One conflict I can see within the NSDAP is between centralists and decentralists.
Himmler would be a centralist arguing for it as supporting bureaucratic efficiency.
Feder was definitely a decentralist arguing for communitarian units of production and living on the level of small towns.
Hitler and others took a more balanced view trying to accommodate both.

[Otium]

The Volksgemeinshaft was the National Socialist conception of the "People's Community" by which the unity of all Germans was secured despite their diverse vocations. All were equally important to the life of the German nation. They believed that no German should be looked down upon, or denied opportunities because of his class, but instead viewed as an equal member of the Volk, the race, the German ethnicity.

Some historians have misinterpreted this entirely to deride National Socialism as having "failed" to produce the equality of which they spoke - however they approach this topic from the Marxist concept of equality of outcome, rather than the National Socialist concept of equality as the hierarchy of meritocracy, and all Germans being equal among peers of varying vocational status in the German state.

Michael Wildt, a German historians who has written a lot about the Volksgemeinshaft writes:

According to Broszat, the critique of the status quo and the desire for change expressed in the idea of the Volksgemeinschaft (People's Community) unleased a powerful "social force that redounded to the benefit of the NSDAP and had manifested itself in the enormous industry, sacrifice, and energy of its members and supporters during the Kampfzeit [the pre-1933 "time of struggle"]. This explains the extraordinary commitment and readiness for action displayed by large parts of the nation during the Hitler regime."

Broszat's reflections found support in Hans-Ulrich Wehler's work on the social history of the Third Reich. In terms of loyalty to the Nazi regime, the impact of rapid return to full employment cannot be underestimated. The Great Depression had reached its low point in Europe in 1932, and the first signs of recovery were evidence by 1933. In Germany the economic upswing was bolstered by the Nazis' wage freeze, their rapid expansion of public payrolls (which rewarded countless party loyalists with new jobs), and the growing demand for labor in the strongly government-supported armaments industry. Germany was the first industrialized nation to reach full employment after the Great Depression. In 1936, in secret reports to the Social Democratic leaders exiled in Prague, party supporters noted with resignation that "large parts of the working class" had exchanged their "freedom" for "security" in the workplace since Hitler took power.

Michael Wildt, Volksgemeinshaft: A Controversy, quoted in: Beyond the Racial State (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Pp. 327-328

I think this is revealing, because Wildt seemingly doesn't take the common approach many "historians" do by claiming the National Socialists simply "took advantage" of a recovering economy in 1933 to achieve their Economic Miracle. Instead he takes a much more reasonable approach and credits the National Socialists with having contributed to this uptick in the economy to make Germany the fastest recovery nation in Europe and the world, from the Depression. Which is in itself a marvellous achievement, even if the economy at this time was already "recovering". That a nation could recover so fast must be credited to those in charge of that nation.

It's also interesting to note that William L. Shirer confirmed the reports written by the exiled Social Democrats when he travelled factories in Germany and asked workers their opinion of the new regime:

Yet the Nazi terror in those early years, I was beginning to see, affected the lives of reactively few Germans. The vast majority did not seem unduly concerned with what happened to a few Communists, Socialists, pacifists, defiant priests and pastors, and to the Jews. A newly arrived observer was forced, however reluctantly, as in my own case, to conclude that on the whole the people did not seem to feel that they were being cowed and held down by an unscrupulous tyranny. On the contrary, and much to my surprise, they appeared to support it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow Adolf Hitler was imbuing them with a new hope, a new confidence and an astounding renewed faith in the future of their country.

What seemed to matter to them the most was that the Führer was setting out to liquidate the past, with all of its frustrations and bitter disappointments. He was promising to free Germany from the consequences of its defeat in 1918: the shackles of the peace treaty imposed on a beaten nation. He was assuring the people that he would make Germany strong again, the equal of the other great powers.

This is what most Germans, even those lukewarm toward Nazism or even opposed to it, wanted, and they accepted the sacrifices that the Leader demanded: the loss of personal freedom, a Spartan ider ("Guns before Butter") and hard work.

By the time I arrived in Germany, Hitler was beginning to make good on his promise to abolish unemployment. The previous year the registered unemployed had numbered six million. The figure already had fallen by more than a million; in another two years it would drop to less than a million and shortly thereafter disappear altogether. I soon found out what a job and a full dinner-pail meant to a German worker. When I went to some of the big industrial plants on the outskirts of Berlin, now humming at full blast thanks to the orders for secret rearmament, I expected workers to be sullen about the Nazi suppression of their trade unions, which had been the strongest in Europe and the backbone of the Weimar Republic. I found that they were not unhappy at all.

Didn't they resent the loss of their freedom to organise? I would ask.

"Freedom?" they would say/ "Well, yes - that one." The unions had done a lot for the working man. But, on the other hand, there was one freedom, they said, they were glad to lose under Hitler.

"What is that?" I asked.

"The freedom to starve. Like we had before. Like you have in all your free-enterprise, capitalist countries. Like you have in your America, from all we hear. How many unemployed you got in your country? Ten million, we hear. Like it used to be here."

Most of the organised German workers had been socialists, quite a few Communists, until their parties were suppressed in the first year of Hitler's rule. The ones I talked to, with a few exceptions, had not become Nazis. They still mouthed the Marxist jargon, but they seemed content enough to just have a job and to leave politics, in which they had been so involved before 1933, to the Nazis.

[...]

the workers had gone on approvingly, as did almost all other Germans. [...] There was never any revolt of the German proletariat, as there had been in 1918. [...] The German people, on the whole, had accepted the Nazi tyranny, and were helping to make it work. A newly arrived American correspondent had to recognise that startling reality. The outside world still did not believe it - or us - when we began to report it.

William L. Shirer, The Nightmare Years 1930-1940 (Little, Brown & Company, 1984). Pp. 147-148, 149

Shirer also repeated this in an interview with Bill Moyer:

I remember going up to Hamburg or someplace to try and find out why German workers were supporting him, and they said-I said, “Don’t you miss the freedoms you had, of free trade unions, of free elections?” And they said, “Well, I’ll tell you, there’s one freedom that we don’t miss, and that’s the freedom to starve.” There was no real German resistance. I mean, there were lots of Germans, but they were a handful, really. There was no attempt at Hitler until the very end, and this was by a handful of military people. But the masses, the workers, the petit bourgeoisie and so forth, never revolted.

Shirer, quoted in an interview with Bill Moyer, see: https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13574

This isn't a revelation to be taken lightly, as probably the most famous "Journalist" to have experienced the Third Reich from such an overtly hostile perspective it can hardly be denied that Shirer would have a lot of incentive to find people that would conform to his anti-Nazi narrative. That he continuously pontificates from that perspective in his writing, using phrases and words like "Tyranny" and "Nazi Terror", while providing no evidence to support this vitriolic nonsense, is impressive.

Shirer's comment about the Trade Unions I don't think stands up considering that 60% of Germans were not apart of any kind of trade union whatsoever:

The aim of the Labour Front was to have one single body to represent all workers in negotiations with employers regarding wages, hours, overtime, conditions, etc. Its dominant philosophy was that there would be a new harmony in the workplace instead of class conflict. [...] the attack on the unions had less of an impact than it otherwise might have had if more German workers had actually been members of trade unions in the first place. As we have seen, only about 40 per cent were members in 1933.

Martyn Whittock, A Brief History of the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of the Nazis (Robinson, 2011), Pp. 91

Another point I think is worth mentioning in this thread, is the common myth that the Communists and Socialists were the true representatives of the working class. This untrue, the working class was not a unified political force, and they were voting for the NSDAP much more than history has wanted to recognize:

, the appeal to industrialists should not obscure the fact that the Nazis were also successful in pulling in working-class support. This was obscured at the time by the fact that middle-class people tended to ‘go Nazi’ as part of large recognizable communities and groups, whereas workers tended to join individually. In contrast, the non-Nazi trade unions (for example, those run by the Social Democrats) continued in existence until destroyed by the Nazis in May 1933 and this gave the impression that most workers had not gone over to the Nazis. This was despite the fact that high unemployment levels had already reduced the numbers in non-Nazi trade unions and made these groups even less representative of the working class than they appeared. The historian Conan Fischer has suggested why it was the middle-class nature of Nazism that most people were aware of, despite large numbers of workers voting Nazi:

The pattern of the Nazi advance probably provides the most convincing explanation, for whilst entire middle-class organisations had been penetrated by, or even switched to the National Socialists, the workers usually joined as individuals or sometimes as members of communities which lacked any pronounced class profile or awareness

Furthermore, the Social Democrats in particular were unwilling to admit to the fact that large numbers of workers would support the Nazis. This phenomenon was less of a problem for centre and right-wing groups to admit to when they lost middle-class support – but they were still powerless to actually stop the loss of their supporters to the Nazis. Interestingly, the Communist Party did recognize that it was losing workers to the Nazis. In 1932, one communist report noted: ‘SA members have no bank account and no salary; most have no job.’ They were ‘without work or hope’ and, as such, were drawn into the SA by promises of work and bread. But most of these frank concerns were restricted to internal party documents and reports and so few people outside the Communist Party leadership were aware of the conclusions.

But the question remains: why did some workers vote Nazi? The answer involves a range of factors. There was a tradition of anti-capitalism from the early years of the Nazi Party and this lingered in a number of areas even after Hitler reined it in. In addition, Hitler’s language of resentment towards the wealthy struck a chord amongst the unemployed and the desperate, who were also impressed by his lowly social origins.12 This was enhanced by the socialist-type slogans and symbols that the Nazis sometimes used in working-class areas. And in such areas it was noted that the SA contained many unemployed workers, who had found purpose in their new-found Nazi membership.

Nazi trade-union activists promoted strike activity in early 1930 to destabilize Weimar. That gave the Nazi Party an illusory appearance of radicalism, which had significant appeal as the numbers of the jobless mounted after 1930. As one worker remarked to a US historian in 1934, Hitler offered more concrete objectives than the revolutionary theories of the communists: ‘Instead of prophecies and far-off visions, in National Socialism he gave us a good working scheme of things we could get busy on right away.’13 And finally, the German working class was not a united group. Only about 30 per cent worked in large unionized industries and had a strong tie to the Communist Party or the Social Democrats. About 60 percent of workers were not even members of a trade union and were far from predictable in their voting patterns. The parties of the left certainly could not take their support for granted. Some were Protestants, others Catholics – and this too affected voting traditions

[...]

the German working class was both large and complex. A study of the 1925 German census by the German analyst Theodor Geiger, in 1932, suggested that even before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, whilst the number of those classed as workers was 25 million, actually some 45 million people ‘were living – during a period of increasing prosperity nearly five years before the depression – on proletarian incomes’. This constituted about 75 per cent of the German population. However, whilst the commonly defined working class made up about 46 per cent of those actively involved in the economy when Hitler came to power – some research suggests as high as 52 per cent in 1933 – and was the largest social class in Germany, it was not a united group. Only about 30 per cent worked in large unionized industries and had a strong tie to the Communist Party or the Social Democrats. About 60 per cent of workers were not even members of a trade union. As a result the working class did not have one experience, set of allegiances or outlook. For all the lower-middle-class origins of the Nazi Party, a surprising number of workers had supported the Nazis before 1933. Complex analysis of voting data has shown that some 40 per cent of Nazi voters were from the working class and this same percentage appeared in Nazi Party membership figures. Amongst the brown-shirted SA this figure rose to 60 per cent. This was far less apparent within the better-educated and more middle-class SS but, even there, the working-class representation was noticeable.

Martyn Whittock, A Brief History of the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of the Nazis (Robinson, 2011), Pp. 38-40, 89