| A Last Big Lie |
4 August 2003
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Nazis Weren't Economic Wizards
Glenview State Bank, outside Chicago, got a lesson in public relations and history last week, when it received several angry letters. The bank's July issue of its magazine Outlook said that Adolf Hitler's economic policies got Germany going again. As usual, the Anti-Defamation League protested the apparent compliment, and the bank apologized on its website and elsewhere in appropriately sorrowful terms. The complaint was that the economic achievements of Herr Hitler could not be divorced from the rest of the evil he perpetrated. What was missing in this episode was any actual analysis of Nazi economic policy.
Generally, it is alleged that the Nazis put Germany back to work and got the economy growing again. Like much of the totalitarian ideal, this bears little resemblance to the facts. Huge re-armaments spending certainly did boost output. However, by declaring Jews and others non-persons, there was no need to count them in the economic statistics. Get rid of the untermenschen from the figures, and naturally, those figures will look better.
And since all of those unpersons still helped get work done while waiting their turn in the gas chambers of Treblinka, productivity improved. It is difficult to make a proper accounting of the benefits that accrue to an employer whose workers either work or die.
Also, the increase in the numbers of Germans employed by the army and secret police certainly made the figures look better, and the very real Reichmarks spent by such people boosted demand. Yet there is very little productive labor that came from having more soldiers, sailors and Gestapo officers.
Less malevolently, the Nazis also believed that women should not work but rather should aspire to be good wives and mothers. When the size of the work force is thus reduced unemployment statistics will look better.
While no precise study has been done, Hitler's regime managed to cook the figures, used slave labor on a massive scale, and plundered bank accounts of political enemies to fund many projects. This is hardly the recipe for a sound economy. One may well even make the case that the expansionary economic policies were not as successful as they might have been because of the ridiculous and evil policies of the regime.