Was Nazi economic policy overwhelming influence by the drive to rearm Germany
Was Nazi economic policy overwhelming influence by the drive to rearm Germany Nazi economic policy was the building blocks of the second world war German war machine and without it, it could not be possible and it would seem that rearmament and the possess of going to war was never too far from the Fuehrer's mind, Hitler the man demonised and responsible for some of the worst atrocities the world as seen, yet also the man responsible for the total recovery of the German economy in a few short years and this would not have been possible without the expanding of territories and the commencing of increased industrial production, namely the production of rearmaments. One of Hitler's main aims which he felt necessary for not only to survival of Germany but obviously the eventual waging war was "autarchy" or self sufficiency he believed this to be imperative to the revival of the economy. Ores in Germany were cruder and of less quality that those others available to producers through importation, Hitler did not care about this neither did he care about the price of converting all blast furnaces to allow them to deal with this other type of ore, his only care was that it would create more jobs from mining and other internal jobs that were required for this increase in internal trade an production. This along with other schemes of using substitute materials in the place of imported
Nazi economic system.
The Nazi economic system developed unintentionally. The initial objective in 1932-33 of its economic policy was just to reduce the high unemployment associated with the Great Depression. This involved public works, expansion of credit, easy monetary policy and manipulation of exchange rates. Generally Centrally Administered Economies (CAE's) have little trouble eliminating unemployment because they can create large public works projects and people are put to work regardless of whether or not their productivity exceeds their wage cost. Nazi Germany was successful in solving the unemployment problem, but after a few years the expansion of the money supply was threatening to create inflation. The Nazi Government reacted to the threat of inflation by declaring a general price freeze in 1936. From that action the Nazi Government was driven to expand the role of the government in directing the economy and reducing the role played by market forces. Although private property was not nationalized, its use was more and more determined by the government rather than the owners. Germany's economy was in a mess when Hitler was elected Chancellor in January 1933. Hitler and Nazi propaganda had played on the population's fear of no hope. Unemployment peaked at 6 million during the final days of the Weimar Republic - near enough 50% of the nation's working population. Now Hitler decreed
"Nazi economic policy was designed to meet purely ideological objectives." How far do you agree?
"Nazi economic policy was designed to meet purely ideological objectives." How far do you agree? "Since struggle among nations would be decisive for future survival, Germany's economy had to be subordinated to the preparation, then carrying out, of this struggle.'1 The National Socialist Party was a completely ideological party, one which claimed to, among other things, battle against the evil that was Bolshevism. The majority of Nazi policy was directed towards this and other ideological aims. Nazi economic policy was no exception to this general rule and as Ian Kershaw attests above, it was principally directed towards rearmament. Although this eased unemployment, which was beneficial to the country, it was purely ideological as these newly acquired arms and armaments would be set aside for the battle against Bolshevism. The fact that the state and not the market determined the shape of the economy meant that it was neither communist nor capitalist and this therefore made an ideological statement. Also, the fact that Göring (whose knowledge of economics was virtually non-existent) was given such an important role in the Nazi economy proved that Hitler just wanted him there because he was an uncompromising Nazi, and therefore met the ideological objectives of the Nazi state. The first and most important factor concerning the economy was that the Nazi party had directed
Nazi Control and Hitler's Foreign Policy
Nazi Control and Hitler's Foreign Policy There are mainly three methods used by the Nazi's in keeping control and nazifying Germany, these were Education, Propaganda and terror. All three were used to control the German people and to keep them doing what the Nazi's wanted. The first of the three education, In my opinion is defiantly one of the more important as children are probably the most naïve to political views, and will believe what they're told as they assume that what they are being taught is the truth. The Nazi's filled all the children's textbooks with questions that would get them thinking in a Nazi manner for example "A lunatic asylum cost six million marks, how many houses at twenty thousand marks each could have been bought instead" the question despite being a maths questions makes the children think how many houses could have been bought promoting the Nazi's views that lunatics should not be cared for as they were not part of the Aryan race. Education was used in all schools and so all the children would be taught it creating a very strong basis for the Nazi movement undermining what their parents thought, as most children would otherwise follow their parents political views, education was a great way to undermine this The whole idea of education was turned upside down and was used to shut children's minds instead of opening them. The curriculum was also
How was seccessful Hitler's economic policy
How successful was Nazi Economic Policy? Getting the Germany economy started was very important to Hitler. He had to rebuild the economy to provide employment for the German people and he needed to sort the economy out to gain support and popularity with the people who had voted him into power. He had mixed success with his economic policy but some aspects went better than others. One of the first problems his party faced was recovering the economy from the Depression caused by the Wall Street Crash in 1929. By 1933 the economy had started to improve a lot. He rejected economic liberalisation and opted for more government intervention and government control. He was very determined to sort out the problems but he did not have any experience with Economics. He realised this and in 1933 he appointed Hjalmar Schacht as the President of the Reichsbank and later in 1934, the Economics Minister. Schacht had a lot of experience in Economics and Hitler chose him to try and sort out the problems with the economy even though he wasn't a Nazi. Schacht's ideas were mostly successful although they worked on the idea of deficit financing, paying government money into the economy to effectively kick start it into action. One of Hitler's top priorities was to solve unemployment. He achieved this to some extent by creating jobs for workers in Public Works Schemes, building Autobahns and
Did the Nazi arms economy make war an economic necessity?
Did the Nazi arms economy make war an economic necessity? In hindsight, the European war that started in September 1939 can seem to be the result of a logical sequence of events which, once set in motion, had an unstoppable momentum. As the steamroller careered downhill, areas were flattened and subsumed within the Reich: the Rhineland, Anschluss with Austria, the Sudetenland, Silesia, Czechoslovakia, Poland. The familiarity of the litany and its repetition in popular accounts [1] imbue it with an air of inevitability. However, just because it did happen, it does not follow that it had to happen in that way: traditional narrative accounts - especially popular ones - tend, in my view, to obscure the elements of contingency, chance and choice. Here, I will attempt to cast off the straitjacket of historical inevitability and start from the premise that there is no set of mechanical social and economic processes that control the destiny of politicians and nations. Rather, I will assume that there were alternative courses of action, alternative outcomes, and that economic imperatives were only one aspect of the matrix of influences that led to war. In considering this question, I will first discuss the following areas: the nature and results of the Nazi arms programme (in some detail); the place of the economy in Nazi thinking, and the wider perspective of domestic and
Hitler's Foreign Policy - Appesement and the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
History Test – Hitler’s Foreign Policy . Hitler had many aims in foreign policy: he wanted to destroy the Treaty of Versailles, to stop the reparation payments, to earn Lebensraum in East by invading Eastern Europe and the USSR, to achieve Pan-Germanic Nationalism, to rearm and to defeat communism. . Britain followed the policy of appeasement for many reasons. The first was that Britain did not want to repeat the horrors of World War One. They vividly remembered the horrific experiences of it and wanted to avoid another war at almost any cost and so, by appeasing Hitler, they could prevent another war. Another reason was that Hitler was standing up to Communism. Hitler was not the only concern to Britain and its allies. They were more concerned about the spread of Communism and particularly about the dangers to world peace posed by Stalin. Hitler acted as a buffer to the threat of spreading communism. A further reason that Britain followed a policy of appeasement was that many people agreed with Hitler that the Treaty of Versailles is unfair to Germany. They assumed that once these wrongs were put right then Germany would become a peaceful nation again. Also Britain had economic problems which were a higher priority. It was still suffering from the effects of the Depression. They had large debts and huge unemployment. . In this essay I am going to argue that the Nazi
How successful were Nazi economic policies in the years 1933-45?
How successful were Nazi economic policies in the years 1933-45? When the Nazi Party came to power in 1933 it had two main aims - to solve unemployment, and to make Germany as strong an economic and military power as possible, so that the humiliating and devastating defeat of the First World War could never happen again. In order to do this, several areas had to be tackled. Firstly, unemployment was huge and rising steadily - in 1933 six million people were unemployed. Secondly, the party had promised better conditions for workers, and this had to be balanced with continuing the good relationship that the Nazis had with businesses. In order to build up Germany's military strength after the under-funding and downsizing that Versailles imposed, large amounts of funding were needed for the armaments industry and the armed forces. Lastly, the Nazis wanted to create autarky - making Germany self-sufficient and ready for war. The stages of the German economy - The economic recovery, the four year plan and the war economy, all reached different extents of success, to which are subjective to their strengths and failures. The 'success' can be divided between the policies aims, and the results, the results being of most importance. Germany had faced continuing economic problems since the end of the first war, those problems then worsened coinciding with the world economic depression
"Nazi policy towards the Jews up to 1939 was uncoordinated and erratic."
"Nazi policy towards the Jews up to 1939 was uncoordinated and erratic." Discuss. One of the most vital factors for consideration in looking at Nazi policy towards the Jews is the release of Mein Kampf. In looking at the 'Final solution' from an 'Intentionalist' viewpoint Hitler clearly set out his policies on Judaism. It could be argued that as result of no alternative written policy from Hitler these were the sole guidelines Germany were operating on and subsequently Mein Kampf could be viewed as evidence that Nazi Jewish policy was not uncoordinated or erratic but followed a plan using Hitler' guidelines. Hitler capitalized on the strong Anti Semitic feeling prevalent within Germany at the time following the First World War. In 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany, in the same year instructions were given to Germans to boycott Jewish shops and Jewish owned businesses. It is believed that Hitler allowed the organization of such a boycott to try and quell the spontaneous outbursts of the S.A which threatened his allegiances with the conservative elite and also as a result of the Jewish declaration of war on Germany as reported by the Daily Mail in London. The 'indefinite' boycott however, lasted only a day. Economic repercussions forced Hitler and his Nazi party to reconsider the implications of an indefinite boycott. The Nazi party also around this time introduced a
How successful were Nazi economic policies in the years 1933-45?
How successful were Nazi economic policies in the years 1933-45? (30 Mark) Nazi economic policies were extremely successful, this can be argued from the viewpoint of many reasons. One reason why the Nazis were successful with their economic policies was due to Dr Hjalmar Schacht. Schacht directed the German economy from 1933 – 36, the first three years of Hitler’s reign as chancellor. He believed in a steady growth/currency. The things he did got industry going again. He ignored the Treaty of Versailles ban and restrictions on the German military and had built tanks, planes and ships in the process of Rearmament. This got people working again and Schacht had infrastructure assembled, the Autobahn was originally built by the Nazis to better aid troop movement. Once the basics were functioning again, the whole thing snowballed and the entire economy recovered quickly. He also stopped making the huge reparation payments that the Versailles Treaty stipulated, and instead directed all that money back into Germany. Schacht employed specific strategies which would successively improve the German economy. Schacht took control of state finances within the economy, set low interest rates to inspire investor confidence, rescheduled local authority debts and set about forming a public sector investor programme, i.e. housing and jobs. These targets were on the whole achieved
