Germany managed to get from a ruined country after WW1 to almost-taking-over-the-world in about 2 decades.
Did the fascists build a productive economy or did they just treat the people as slaves and made them work for “the motherland” ?
Rather than creating an economy where consumers and producers meet the needs of their own individual selves, so everyone can be prosperous, free, and happy. Fascist governments, force an economy where producers and consumers are forced to meet the needs of the state, transferring all wealth to the government from the people. So no one, but the state, is prosperous, free, or happy. They had strict controls over the economy and money, that could only benefit the state short-term. Of course, this only created a boom, which, like all oversized governments, will eventually bust, when funding runs out, expenses are miscalculated, support of the citizens is lost, too many foreign enemies are made, or the monetary system collapses.
Look at America, It has a huge Government and the strongest military in the world. And at the same time a vast majority of Americans enjoy an extremely prosperous life. Imagine if the government had full access to the wealth and labor of the citizens. It would be a nearly unstoppable force, except war cannot be perpetually funded, because when citizens stop doing work because it didn’t directly benefit them, the war-machine runs out of fuel and crashes.
You’re comparing the military of one state to another, so I guess in comparison the fascist one may not look too bad. Now, whilst it was hardly an anarchist society I daresay Hitler would have had a much harder time invading Switzerland, and a considerably harder time still trying to invade a free society had there been one.
NEITHER.
Germans have always been great workers and innovators. But…the new economic aproach of the NAZI did help boost production.
NEITHER.
Germans have always been great workers and innovators. But…the new economic aproach of the NAZI did help boost production.
I agree that Germans have been great workers and innovator. After WWII whole world got ahead thanks to German technology a inovations proposed during war.
Interesting fact is German miracle after WWII. I’ve seen interpretation that Germans after losing WWII wanted to show the world they are the best. They effort was made on work and reconstruction and they made Germany during 50’s and 60’s one of the most emerging economy. Similar situation was also in Japan.
So if Germans wanted to proof they are best measured in economy growth terms they showed it also ater frist world war. They country was devastated too. Nazi regime “helped” to move things different direction.
The economy was productive no doubt. The question is if it was productive and free country at the same time. When society isn’t free then any progress country makes doesn’t concern us because people don’t decide about their consumption feely. Economy build on military production and central planning doesn’t end well.
This is a very good question and deserving of some scholarly treatment. If anybody out there has to do a thesis, I would suggest an economic history of the Third Reich.
I think what happened first was Germany threw off the ruinous reparations it was forced to pay under Versailles. This was effectively a huge tax cut. Second, Germans are productive, smart people and were able to expand their economy accordingly. The fascist state, like all states, was parasitic on the private sector’s wealth. Nobody complained because all the Germans in the German nation-state were happy and proud to pitch in.
As the fascist state expanded, more and more capital was diverted from the private sector, and towards the end there was shortage and a dramatic decline in private production. Hitler’s regime became increasingly unpopular and eventually would have been overthrown. The model was unsustainable.
In my opinion, the case of prewar Nazi Germany is a example par excellence about why the GDP is very irrelevant figure about the true health of a nation. Maybe GDP increased at annual rate of 10 percent, but for ordinary consumer and worker, the country was economically far from a paradise. Consider the following examples which come directly from official sources of the Nazi regime. Even they don’t deny that real wages were falling already before the WW2 began.
- Falling nominal wages
According to the Reich Statistical Office, they [=wages] declined for skilled workers from 20.4 cents an hour in 1932, at the height of the depression, to 19.5 cents during the middle of 1936. Wage scales for unskilled labor fell from 16.1 cents to 13 cents an hour. (William Shirer: The Rise and Fall Of the Third Reich". p. 233)
- Increasing consumer prices. And don’t forget that wage and price controls also drastically reduced the real rate of inflation. And additionally there was apparently a deficit of consumers goods (a phenomenom that appears in almost every totalitarian country).
“A summary of price and wage levels prepared for Hitler on 4 September 1935 showed almost half of the German work-force earning gross wages of 18 ReichMarks or less per week. This was substantially below the poverty line…Wages, then, remained at the 1932 level–substantially lower than the last pre-Depression year of 1928 in the much-maligned Weimar Republic. Food prices, on the other hand, had risen officially by 8 per cent since 1933. Overall living costs were higher by 5.4 per cent. Official rates did not, however, tell the whole tale. Increases of 33, 50, and even 150 per cent had been reported for some foodstuffs. By late summer, the terms food crisis' and provisions crisis’ were in common use.” (Reason Magazine)
- Labour service meant servitude and extra work without salary.
The only good thing in Nazi Germany was the large drop of the unemployment rate. Nazis simply selected the different method than New Deal (which cut working week and increased real wages, but hardly reduced unemployment) by reducing the living standard of workers.
Hitler created a short-term economic bubble that would have burst anyway if he didn’t go to war. In some ways, Hitler almost had to go to war to retain his power.
German territory was never invaded during that war. Most of German capital infrastructure survived the war.
Germany suffered economic privations because of the reparations and because of the Weimar government’s policy of inflation; but Hitler turned the economic situation around with a few policy changes.
they didn’t have a productive economy, they just had the largest military on earth
Hoppe has a lecture in the media section on The Economic Doctrine of the Nazi’s.
France had a larger army than Germany before it was invaded in 1941. Russia had a larger army than germany throughout the war. The most important factor in the production of military power is the amount of wealth the government can extract from the population.
This is not a direct answer, but this might help in providing a bit of background in how the fascists managed to win political power:
Vote for Hitler “normal” in economic context
I’ve floated the article around on the forums before (so I apologize), but it is a pretty imporant article in of itself. I wonder if we should challenge the Statists into defending the study’s findings?
Does anybody see any similarities in the election process in Germany when the Nazi’s took over and what just happened during the election last week?
With the government looking at bailing out GM, maybe we’ll get our own little chevy “volkswagen”.