How did Hitler and the Nazis change the German economy and the lives of Germany workers between 1933 and 1936?

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Nazi Germany

Economic Policies

Q: How did Hitler and the Nazis change the German economy and the lives of Germany workers between 1933 and 1936?

        In January 1933, Hitler was made Chancellor of a very economically unstable Germany. He and his party had thrived in the midst of this crisis which had terrorised the lives of the German populace and owed great amounts of their support to it; However, now in power, the tables had turned on the Nazis. They were now the government upon whom the troubles of Germany would be blamed. Hitler knew this, and did not hesitate to restructure, improve and 'purify' Germany and its economy in an effort propagandised as 'for the good of the people' when, in reality, the good of the people was continually put second to the good of Hitler and his plans of war.

        The most pressing issue at this time was mass unemployment, which official statistics show rose to over 6 million Germans out of work (although some estimations reach as high as 11 million). This was due to the long-term downturn in economic activity that had affected Germany and much of the rest of the world, called the Great Depression. Hitler saw unemployment as a waste of resources, as any man not working was not contributing to his country and therefore was not contributing to the war effort. In 1934 Hitler appointed Hjalmar Schacht, already President of the Reichsbank since 1933, Minister of Economics. Schacht was to thank for many of the Third Reich's economic policies, and managed to combat the effects of the Great Depression by keeping the policies introduced by Kurt Von Schleicher's 1932 government. Deficit-supported public work programs (provided through the RAD, in which all 18-25 year old men had to serve six months) were the foundation of these policies, and so rearmament and military spending eventually supplemented this economic policy by boosting demand. With these massive public works stimulating the economy, the worryingly high unemployment figures started to fall and, as the years passed, Hitler's government saw a massive reduction in unemployment, from 6 million in 1933 to 2.5 million in 1935, and finally to practically zero at the end of 1939 – the most rapid decline in unemployment in any country during the Great Depression.

        However, it is worth noting that these encouraging figures did not come without a catch. Women were not included in unemployment figures, and so the many women forced out of jobs in medicine and the civil service or paid 1000 marks to stay at home were not counted. This is the same for the Jews forced out of business: after 1935, they were no longer included in the unemployment figures because they were legally no longer German citizens. Restrictions were imposed on the German people regarding work, many through the abolition of the Trade Unions.

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        The Weimar Government had faced opposition from the Trade Unions in its day, and Hitler wanted more than anything to crush any possibility of opposition to his own Nazi rule, including the people. The German Labour Front was formed May 10th 1933 as a result of the reform of the Independent Trade Unions and immediately took over the function of organizing workers in Germany to create, in the words of its leader Dr. Robert Ley, a "social and productive society". In theory, the DAF was a medium through which workers and employers could represent their individual interests, similar to ...

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