Financing the economy also forced the Nazi’s, once in power, to sacrifice their idea of ‘mittlestand’ as from 1928-1930 they had targeted small farmers who were crucial in the ideology as the pure ‘blood and soil’ of the German people. Having promised to protect these potentially weak groups against the threat of powerful working classes and large capitalists the Nazi party completely changed it priorities to funding these large capitalist businesses in order to finance the recovery of the economy.
Hitler’s 4-year plan was drawn up as an outline of Nazi ideology. It outlined autarky (self-sufficiency) as a key aspect to achieving a stable economy. This led to government involvement in workers lives. The Nazi ideology of ‘strength through joy’ was a way of motivating workers and keeping them content under the Nazi rule. The Nazi’s offered incentives such as paid holidays (3 days increased to 12 days per annum), improved living standards, Christmas bonuses, insurance schemes and the idea of community within the workplace which overall led to a great decline in unemployment levels and left the Nazi’s with a motivate labour force, confident in its patriots and willing to carry out their bidding. The Nazi’s controlled their workers lives by limiting their freedoms, banning trade unions, establishing their own ‘councils of trust’, took their political powers by suppressing non-Nazi parties and directing workers as they needed them. However many of the schemes were merely used as propaganda incentives to pool workers together under the support of the Nazi party. For example the Volkswagen or ‘peoples car’ scheme, which symbolised the co-operation of the Nazi’s to help potentially anyone and which a worker had to save and labour hard towards, was sacrificed once the economy was stable as there was no need to drain the countries finances with free cars once the workforce was unitedly controlled by the Nazi’s and when the money would instead go towards funding further Nazi ideologies such as rearmament. Once self-sufficiency had been established, the labour incentives were sacrificed to a lesser degree.
Hitler’s initial ideological plan of a united political Germany was also unrealistic as the party stood for nationalists, socialists, Germans and workers, all with conflicting political opinions, motivations and interests. It would be impossible to satisfy all as communism claimed to, and the Nazi party was strongly anti-communist and therefore he would have to sacrifice the idea of a united Germany. Yet Hitler overcame this problem by creating a dictatorship by the introduction of his ‘fuhrerprinzip’ where he had supreme power over the governing of the country and the Nazis were the unopposed political party in Germany. The role of the state having greater control was not made for ideological reasons. Instead Hitler used his ideology to maintain the economy as fuhrerprinzip was made for practical reasons to maintain a managed economy. The totalitarian nature of the Nazi party was one of its major tenets. The Nazis connected all the great achievements in the past of the German nation and its people with the ideals of National Socialism even before the ideology officially existed.
Hitler saw rearmament as a way to utilize this National Socialism. Although not specific to Nazi policy, rearmament was a way to reassert Germanys great status. Hitler had to sacrifice his rearmament plan until the economy was financially able to support it but once this was enabled he focused greatly on rebuilding Germanys military might. Hitler then refused to sacrifice the rearmament plan when the issue of ‘Guns or Butter’ which stressed the issue of balancing the ideal with the economical output. At one point military spending was over 50% of the overall country’s spending and led to a disagreement between Hitler and his head of Reichsbank, Schacht. Sacht saw that the newly recovered economy was being forced to put all of its effort in rearmament instead of its citizens. Hitler overruled proving that the economy was recovered enough to allow for the progression of his ideology. This also sacrificed much of the public confidence in him as people saw Hitler as progressing towards self-gain instead of providing for them (’Guns’ over ‘butter’) and led to general public outcry and minor disruptions.
Rearmament and autarky needed raw materials to work, which also led to the sacrifice of peace and led Germany into a war its economy was not fully prepared for. Due to the depletion of Germanys raw materials namely gas, oil and coal and without relying on the imports from other countries, Hitler decided to plunder materials from other countries to fund his rearmament ideology. He initially strengthened Germany by taking over Austria and Czechoslovakia to gain resources, but the invasion of Poland caused the Allies to declare war. This sacrificed Hitler’s supply of raw materials as now Germany was fighting a war instead of the Blitzkrieg ideal of plundering foreign resources. This ideological sacrifice lead to supply problems and by 1940 the German economy was unable to replace lost planes. This also sacrificed Hitler’s plan to increase German living space or Lebensraum by exploiting countries for their defence, materials and military support which couldn’t be continued as the economy had to deal with the financial drain of war.
Once war had been declared and the economy was no longer fluctuating, Hitler sacrificed his ideological plans for ‘kinder, kirche, kuche’ or the women’s roll of bearing children, attending church and caring for the family (translated as cook). Hitler initially argued that for the German woman her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home." Mass unemployment reinforced the view that should remain at home when a third of male workers lost their jobs and became during the depression in the 1920s. Nazis argued that female workers who, on average, only received 66% of men’s wages were replacing men. Women were encouraged to make good wives by keeping the home for her husband and rearing children. Women were both encouraged and forced from their jobs to make way for this Nazi ideal and action was taken to reduce the number of women working in the professions. Married women doctors and civil servants were dismissed in 1934 and from June 1936 women could no longer act as judges or public prosecutors. However this ideology also had to be sacrificed to maintain the economy when war was imminent and soldiers were conscripted into the army. Women were drafted back into their previous occupations and many took up new employment in manual munitions factories. The Nazi ideology of a Greater Germany had brought war and as a consequence the Nazi principle idea of reproducing a traditional Aryan race was sacrificed to aid the economy’s recovery.
It is clear that rebuilding the economy was more important to Hitler than satisfying the ideological desires of the more radical Nazis. However to achieve this his ideologies were key because he used certain ideals such as autarky to make Germany self-sufficient and as a consequence Germanys economy recovered to a stable position from which he could continue to achieve his ideals such as anti-Semitism and lebensraum. Therefore the Nazi party only sacrificed certain ideals temporarily in order to achieve a stable economy and pave the way for the remaining ideals that would not have been achievable without the initial sacrifice.
