THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST ECONOMY (part 1/2)
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ld8fxzEXZ2Qz/
DOWNLOAD THIS EXCELLENT VIDEO ABOUT THE ECONOMICS OF THE THIRD REICH BEFORE IT GETS CENSORED. Main secondary sources used for this video (click images for links to these two excellent archived books)
https://archive.org/details/HitlersRevolutionByRichardTedor_383
https://archive.org/details/ToozeAdamTheWagesOfDestruction
Part 2 here ; https://www.minds.com/DerHimmelstern/
INTRODUCTION
The scale of the Nazi economic achievement should not be underestimated, it was real and impressive. No other European economy achieved such a rapid recovery. To most people in 1930s Germany it seemed there had been an economic miracle. The Volksgemeinschaft [National Community] was more than mere rhetoric; it meant full employment, higher wages, stable prices, reduced poverty, cheap radios and budget holidays. It is easily forgotten that there were more holiday camps than concentration camps in Germany between 1935 and 1939. Workers became better trained, farmers saw their incomes rise. Nor were foreigners unimpressed by what was happening. American corporations including Standard Oil, General Motors and IBM all rushed to invest directly in the German economy.
The War of the World - Niall Ferguson
Hitler, this uneducated ordinary man has out of natural intuition and even despite the opposition of the technician Schacht, created an especially dangerous economic system. An illiterate in every theory of economics driven only by necessity, he has cut out international as well as private high finance. Hitler possesses almost no gold, and so he can't endeavor to make it a basis for currency. Since the only available collateral for his money is the technical aptitude and great industriousness of the German people, technology and labor became his 'gold'.
Hitler's Revolution - Richard Tedor
1) SETTING THE STAGE
In 1931 alone, 13.736 companies filed for bankruptcy. An average of 107.000 people per month lost their livelihood. In mid-1932, almost 23 million Germans (36 percent of the population) were receiving public assistance.
Hitler's Revolution - Richard Tedor
In January 1933, Germany still owed 19 billion RMs to foreign creditors, of which 10,3 billion were long-term bonds and 4,1 billion were short-term loans. [...] At least 8,3 billion RMs were owed to the United States, by far the largest creditor. [...] To service its debts Germany faced the need to transfer abroad interest and principal totaling something close to 1 billion RMs per annum, and, given the unavailability of new credit, in the 1930's unlike in the 1920's Germany faced the prospect of having to make 'real transfers'. It could not simply borrow afresh to repay its creditors. If Germany was to service its debts, exports would have to exceed German imports by at least 1 billion RMs. This meant a substantial reduction in the standard of living.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
2) PHILOSOPHY
At the NSDAP congress in September 1935, Hitler defined the RAD's (Reich's labor service) social purpose to 54.000 assembled members: "To us National Socialists, the idea of sending all Germans through a single school of labor is among the means of making this National community a reality. [...] The structure supported the goal of eliminating strife within industry by encouraging mutual respect, based not on position but on performance. As defined in one publication, "There is neither employer nor employee, but only those entrusted with the work of the entire nation. [...] Everyone works for the people, regardless of whether a so-called employer or so-called employee, as it was in the previous middle class order." This represented a revolutionary departure from the Liberal Democratic perception, as another German study maintained: "In the Capitalist system of the past, money became the goal of work for the employee as well as for the employer." It was the individual's wages that appeared to give work a sense of purpose. The employee saw the employer simply as someone who 'earns more.' And the employer regarded the staff of workers in his firm only as a means to an end, an instrument for him to earn more. The consequences of this thinking were ominous. Should the working man have any ambition to work anymore when he says to himself, 'I'm only working so that the man over in the office can earn more?' Can a business deliver quality work if everyone thinks only of himself?
Hitler's Revolution - Richard Tedor
Hitler wanted Germans to have the highest possible standard of living, he said in an interview with an American journalist in early 1934. In my opinion, the Americans are right in not wanting to make everyone the same but rather in upholding the principle of the ladder. However, every single person must be granted the opportunity to climb up the ladder. [...] Both National Socialist ideology and Hitler's basic outlook, writes historian John Garraty, inclined the regime to favor the ordinary German over any elite group. Workers had an honored place in the system. In accord with this, the regime provided substantive fringe benefits for workers that included subsidized housing, low-cost excursions, sports programs, and more pleasing factory facilities.
How Hitler tackled unemployment and revived Germany's economy - Mark Weber (Institute for Historical Review)
Hitler is famous for having said that there was no need to Nationalize German business, if the population itself could be Nationalized. The Third Reich celebrated the German workers and their contribution to the racial community like no previous political regime. In this respect the official language of Nazi Germany set standards quite different from those of the Weimar Republic, let alone the Wilhelmine Monarchy. Hitler's dream was undoubtedly collectivist at its core.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
3) BATTLE FOR WORK
They stimulated private industry through subsidies and tax rebates, encouraged consumer spending by such means as marriage loans, and plunged into the massive public-works program that produced the autobahn [highway system], and housing, railroad and navigation projects.
How Hitler tackled unemployment and revived Germany's economy - Mark Weber (Institute for Historical Review)
The art of economic policy was to provide the correct dose of credit-financed stimulation, sufficient to restore full employment, but not an excessive amount that would push the economy beyond the limit of full employment and unleash an inflationary free-for-all. The Reichsbank thus ended up holding the work creation bills, in exchange for new cash. To make this acceptable to the Reichsbank, the RFM promised to redeem the bills according to a fixed timetable. Once recovery had been achieved, the RFM would raise the necessary funds through the additional flow of tax revenue generated by economic revival, or by floating long-term government loans, once the financial markets had recovered and savings were buoyant. [...] The second Reinhardt programme of September 1933 was a return to a less ambitious ideas of work creation relying not on the direct effect of credit-financed government spending, but on indirect subsidies to private activity.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
Beginning in 1934, dividends for stockholders of German corporations were limited to six % annually. Undistributed profits were invested in Reich government bonds. [...] Taxation of National Socialist Germany was sharply "Progressive," with those of higher income paying proportionately more than those in the lower income brackets. Between 1934 and 1938, the average tax rate on incomes of more than 100,000 marks (yearly) rose from 37,4% to 38,2%. In 1938 Germans in the lowest tax brackets were 49% of the population and had 14% of the National income, but paid only 4,7% of the tax burden. Those in the highest income category, who were just one percent of the population but with 21% of the income, paid 45% of the tax burden. [...] The law stipulated that German construction materials be used. [...] The government recovered the revenue lost from repealed automotive taxes through reduced payments of jobless benefits, income tax from newly employed auto workers, highway tolls and corporate tax. [...] Despite objections from Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reich's Bank, Hitler withdrew Germany's money system from the gold standard. [...] Hitler substituted a direct barter system in foreign dealings. German currency became defined as measuring units of human productivity. [...] After Hitler nullified the unions, workers came under the newly established Reich's Institute for Labor Mediation and Unemployment Insurance, the RAA. [...] The government also protected smaller and newer businesses by banning the practice by established enterprises of ruining retail competitors by underselling their products. The state appointed the Price Oversight Commission to stop businesses from decreasing production or delivery of certain commodities, especially foodstuffs, for the purpose of creating artificial shortages to inflate prices and overcharge consumers. [...] Hitler enacted a law making six months' labor service compulsory for teenagers upon high school graduation.
Hitler's Social Revolution - David Schoenbaum
By 1935 German GDP in real terms had recovered to roughly the same level it had stood at in 1928. This was no doubt a rapid recovery. Between March and September 1934 the Nazi regime suffered the closest thing to a comprehensive Socio-economic crisis in its entire 12 year history. From the beginning of 1934 the Reichsbank's reserves of foreign currency dwindled alarmingly. Since all the most important industries in Germany were dependent on raw materials from abroad, this savage restriction prompted fears of a new wave of lay-offs. Shortages of raw materials spelled not only unemployment; they also implied shortages of supply for consumers, fears that were compounded by the unusually bad harvest of 1934. Popular discontent with the rising price of imported food was widespread.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
From 1934 to 1937, the number of women in the work force increased from 4,5 million to 5,7 million. Despite programs to encourage women to return to traditional family roles, the government did not restrict those choosing a career.
Hitler's Revolution - Richard Tedor
In 1939, a third of all married women in Germany were economically active and more than half of all women between the ages of 15 and 60 were in work. [...] A year later, the share of German women in the native workforce stood at 41 percent, compared to less than 30 percent in Britain. [...] It goes without saying that by sustaining the food supply, Germany's farm women provided an indispensable service to the Nazi war effort.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
But if prosperous Jewish families had emigrated en masse from Germany in 1933 and 1934, the effects on the Reichbank's foreign currency reserves would have been disastrous. At a conservative estimate German Jewish wealth in 1933 came to at least 8 billion RM. Transferring even a modest fraction of this amount was clearly beyond the Reichsbank. As it was, the drain was serious enough. According to a detailed account complied by the Reichsbank, the hard currency losses due to emigration between January 1933 and June 1935 came to a total of 132 million RM, of which Jewish emigrants accounted for 124,8 million RM. As of May 1934 the provisions of the so-called Reich flight tax were tightened up, with the lower threshold for liability being cut from 200.000 to 50.000 RM and greater discretion given to the authorities in making the assessment. These measures helped to reduce sharply the outflow of foreign exchange due to emigration. By the summer of 1935 the Reichsbank's monthly losses had fallen to 2 million RM (when having peaked at as high as 11 million per month in 1933). However, the net effect was profoundly contradictory. Rather than encouraging emigration, the Third Reich was now imposing a severe tax on anyone seeking to leave the country. Once the initial violence of the seizure of power had passed, Jewish emigration dwindled to only 23.000 in 1934 and 21.000 in 1935.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
This income pyramid was sharply divided by class and gender. Male blue-collar workers on average took home 1.761 Reichsmarks in 1936, whilst working-class women 952 Reichsmarks. The average white-collar male earned 3.000 Reichsmarks, almost twice the figure for his female counterpart. From 1933 onwards apprenticeships and on-the-job training were given massive state support. Amongst other requirements, an entirely new workforce of skilled metalworkers had to be created for the factories serving the Luftwaffe. [...] For many working-class families, the 1930s and 1940s were a period of real Social mobility, not in the sense of an ascent into the middle class, but within the blue-collar skill hierarchy, prompting one author to speak of the 'deproletarianization' of the German working class. [...] Hundreds of thousands of young people who had embarked optimistically on apprenticeships and university degrees found themselves stranded in unemployment. In light of this experience, one did not have to be a radical right-wing ideologue or paranoid anti-Semite to doubt the efficacy of the Liberal doctrine of progress. Hitler and his acolytes were firmly convinced that the development of the German standard of living had been held back since 1918 by an unholy alliance formed between selfish bourgeois Liberals and primitivist Socialists.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
The Third Reich made it its mission to use the authority of the state to coordinate efforts within industry to devise standardized and simplified versions of key consumer commodities. These would then be produced at the lowest possible price, enabling the German population to achieve an immediate breakthrough to a higher standard of living. The epithet which was generally attached to these products was Volk: the Volksempfaenger (radio), Volkswohnung (apartments), Volkswagen, Volkskuehlschrank (refrigerator), Volkstraktor (tractor).
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
For Hitler, there can be no doubt, the car was the great symbol of a modern consumer lifestyle. But in the early 1930s the car was still a luxury reserved for a tiny minority of the German population. In 1932 there were only 486.001 licensed cars in all of Germany. In Berlin, a city of 4 million inhabitants, there were fewer than 51.000 cars. In 1933 only 25 percent of Germany's major roads had hardened surfaces suitable for high-volume motor traffic. To remedy this deficit, the autobahn project was announced in the summer. In April 1933, the regime also announced the elimination of car tax on all newly acquired vehicles. [...] From a total of 486.001 in 1932 the number of registered cars more than doubled to reach 1,271 million by 1938. Compared to average family incomes, cars were simply too expensive. In 1938 a comprehensive found that the minimum cost of purchasing a car and running it for 10.000 kilometers per year was 67,65 RMs per month. A working-class family of four on an income of 2.300 RM per annum would have found that, after allowing for food, housing and utility bills, running a car consumed their entire disposable income.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
The price of petrol was the other main factor. [...] What determined the actual cost of petrol in the Third Reich was politics. [...] Taxes and the legal requirement to add domestically produced alcohol doubled the price of petrol. If promoting motorization had been the chief priority of Hitler's regime, it could have cut the operating cost for a small family car by as much as 15%, by forgoing these taxes. This, however, was an impossibility. IG Farben had won its argument. Of far greater strategic importance to Hitler's regime than popular motorization were the problems of the balance of payments and the related project of fuel autarchy, which required that the price of petrol in Germany be raised to far in excess of world market levels. In the 1930s the cost of petrol produced at IG Farben's plant was 15-17 Pfennigs per liter, implying a price of at least 30 Pfennigs per liter at the petrol pump. A tax on imported fuel was therefore indispensable to sustain the momentum of the synthetic fuel programme. Taxes on imported oil were a significant source of revenue, bringing in 421 million RM in 1936, a third of the total customs revenue of the German state.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
What Hitler had specifically in mind was a family saloon of 30 horse-power, capable of carrying four people in moderate comfort, priced at the extraordinarily low figure of only 1.000 RM. Not surprisingly, the media reacted excitedly to this bold new project. The motor vehicle industry, however was far less enthusiastic. Given the current state of manufacturing technology and the cost of raw materials, no one could see how it would be possible to produce an adequate vehicle for less than 1.000 RM. [...] As Hitler assured Porsche, if necessary the VW project would be pushed through by decree even against the resistance of the industry. The price target would be met by imposing a compulsory cut in the price that Porsche paid for his steel and aluminium. [...] To purchase a Volkswagen, customers were required to make a weekly deposit of at least 5 Reichsmarks into a DAF account on which they received no interest. Once the account balance had reached 750 RMs, the customer was entitled to delivery of a VW. The DAF meanwhile achieved an interest saving of 130 RMs per car. In addition, purchasers of the VW were required to take out a two-year insurance contract priced at 200 RMs. But not a single Volkswagen was ever delivered to a civilian customer in the Third Reich. After 1939, the entire output was reserved for official uses of various kinds. Most of Porsche's half-finished factory was turned over to military production.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze
Part 2 here ; https://www.minds.com/DerHimmelstern/
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