This myth even apolitical normies will fall for needs to be systematically eviscerated once and for all. The man responsible for the economic miracle was Hjalmar Schacht a freemason banker and a old establishment figure who was the president of Reichsbank (aka central bank) under the Weimar Republic during the 1920s and whom Hitler in 1934 appointed as minister of economics, since nazis were economically mostly illiterate romanticist more concerned battling racial identity politics than developing a coherent alternative economic model. Under centrist Schacht the new 'national socialist' economy underwent massive privatization. The economically left-wing faction of the nazi party that unironically hoped for 'real socialism' with German characteristic was knifed in the same year Schacht was put in charge.
What the krauts got with Hjalmar Schacht was a cartel economy dominated by monopolies like siemens, gutehoffnungshütte, krupp and rheinmetall. In the 1930s Germany became one of the most privatized countries in the world, at a time where the world was trying to find it's way out of the depression either through experimenting with socialism or keynesian economics. Nazi Germany instead of breaking up monopolies was strengthening them. Big business conglomerates were preferred to smaller ones because political intervention and lobbying would be easier. The plan was to make politics involved in business through mutual cooperation aka corporatism. Schacht, although being a center-rightist, did support the plan of achieving full employment through public work, yet even this wasn't devised by the nazis either -- the attempt to alleviate unemployment through work brigades constructing the autobahn was a continuation of policies that had been instituted in late Weimar Germany with the support of the last chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, who too got whacked during the the night of the long knives.
Since massive public work programs and stimulating the economy required deficit spending Schacht introduced a scheme that could massively increase government spending without the appearance of it -- this was achieved by setting up a private dummy company called MEtallurgische FOrschungsgesellschaft, in short MEFO, which was a joint-venture effort by the four biggest industrial players -- siemens, gutehoffnungshütte, krupp steel and rheinmetall. The only purpose of this company was issuing so called 'mefo bills'. The plan was that when the government would order a new bach of tanks it wouldn't pay directly with reichmarks, the payment to the armament producer would be deferred with a mefo bill given out by MEFO, which operated as a 'private company', with a guarantee of mefo paying the producer in the period of 6 months, and the government relying on Reichsbank's 'unoficial' promise to buy these contracts right before the pay date.
Due to Schacht's scheme German economy actually recovered, but there were two problems here; since these mefo bills were rated at a 4% annual interest rate and they could be traded between the armament producers, they were used like money in trade deals between different German companies. They were even preferred over real money. the armament producers did not want these contracts to end and so they extended them further and further beyond the initial 6-month pay date. They became a pseudo-currency in themselves. Secondndly, a big portion of these contracts were given to arms producers and not civilian construction of peace economics. It became clear that the mefo scheme was primarily to achieve rearmament, bypassing the Versailles Treaty by avoiding making new public debt in the official books. Consumption actually stagnated and at this point the 'happy well fed german family driving a volkswagen' trope was becoming a myth. Military spending went from constituting 1% of the national budget to 10% in a few years between 1933 and 1936. Schacht desperately tried to warn Hitler that he's going to get the country bankrupt at this rate of military spending.
Hjalmar Schacht maintained that the MEFO scheme was not a permanent solution, but a short, temporary measure to get the economy going again, when unemployment sufficiently lowered and Germany rearmed he and price commissioner Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler both tried to persuade Hitler that Germany was now a defiant military power again and it was the perfect time to change gears from military to civilian oriented production and develop new trade deals in the world market. For Schacht and Goerdler further military expenditure at the expense of civilian economic growth was insane and made no sense form a rational point of view. With military expenditures quickly growing far larger than the civilian work-creation programs Schacht realized that Hitler's imperialist ambitions of achieving Lebenraum through violent irredintism surpassed that of securing the economic gains and social stability of the last four years --
The economic miracle that Schacht made happen was to be driven straight into the ground when Hitler decided to replace the brilliant Schacht with the economically iliterate fatass and trigger happy Goering in 1937
-- With Schacht gone the ongoing massive military expenditure was creating a debt with which the national civilian economy couldn't cope anymore. The overblown nazi military-industrial complex wasn't devised to built refrigeratos and hydroelectric power plants, it could however plunder and pillage neighboring states. Hitler and Goering expected that upcoming territorial expansion would provide the means of repaying the soaring national debt, by using the wealth and manpower of conquered nations. One problem here; they were invading absolute poverty stricken shitholes. In the last years of the third reich 25% of the abour force was made up of slaves, mostly poles and jews, many of them working at in the Asuchwitz labor camps for IG farben's rubber plants fueling the war effort. Perhaps the most clinically insane moment Hitler had was when he traded Schacht's developed economic theories for the idea that you could run a sustainable economy on slave labor and looting at the heart of Europe in the 20th century.
tl;dr: Hitler didn't fix the economy, Hjalmar Schacht did. Hitler replaced him with Göring and ran the economy into the ground again.
What the krauts got with Hjalmar Schacht was a cartel economy dominated by monopolies like siemens, gutehoffnungshütte, krupp and rheinmetall. In the 1930s Germany became one of the most privatized countries in the world, at a time where the world was trying to find it's way out of the depression either through experimenting with socialism or keynesian economics. Nazi Germany instead of breaking up monopolies was strengthening them. Big business conglomerates were preferred to smaller ones because political intervention and lobbying would be easier. The plan was to make politics involved in business through mutual cooperation aka corporatism. Schacht, although being a center-rightist, did support the plan of achieving full employment through public work, yet even this wasn't devised by the nazis either -- the attempt to alleviate unemployment through work brigades constructing the autobahn was a continuation of policies that had been instituted in late Weimar Germany with the support of the last chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, who too got whacked during the the night of the long knives.
Since massive public work programs and stimulating the economy required deficit spending Schacht introduced a scheme that could massively increase government spending without the appearance of it -- this was achieved by setting up a private dummy company called MEtallurgische FOrschungsgesellschaft, in short MEFO, which was a joint-venture effort by the four biggest industrial players -- siemens, gutehoffnungshütte, krupp steel and rheinmetall. The only purpose of this company was issuing so called 'mefo bills'. The plan was that when the government would order a new bach of tanks it wouldn't pay directly with reichmarks, the payment to the armament producer would be deferred with a mefo bill given out by MEFO, which operated as a 'private company', with a guarantee of mefo paying the producer in the period of 6 months, and the government relying on Reichsbank's 'unoficial' promise to buy these contracts right before the pay date.
Due to Schacht's scheme German economy actually recovered, but there were two problems here; since these mefo bills were rated at a 4% annual interest rate and they could be traded between the armament producers, they were used like money in trade deals between different German companies. They were even preferred over real money. the armament producers did not want these contracts to end and so they extended them further and further beyond the initial 6-month pay date. They became a pseudo-currency in themselves. Secondndly, a big portion of these contracts were given to arms producers and not civilian construction of peace economics. It became clear that the mefo scheme was primarily to achieve rearmament, bypassing the Versailles Treaty by avoiding making new public debt in the official books. Consumption actually stagnated and at this point the 'happy well fed german family driving a volkswagen' trope was becoming a myth. Military spending went from constituting 1% of the national budget to 10% in a few years between 1933 and 1936. Schacht desperately tried to warn Hitler that he's going to get the country bankrupt at this rate of military spending.
Hjalmar Schacht maintained that the MEFO scheme was not a permanent solution, but a short, temporary measure to get the economy going again, when unemployment sufficiently lowered and Germany rearmed he and price commissioner Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler both tried to persuade Hitler that Germany was now a defiant military power again and it was the perfect time to change gears from military to civilian oriented production and develop new trade deals in the world market. For Schacht and Goerdler further military expenditure at the expense of civilian economic growth was insane and made no sense form a rational point of view. With military expenditures quickly growing far larger than the civilian work-creation programs Schacht realized that Hitler's imperialist ambitions of achieving Lebenraum through violent irredintism surpassed that of securing the economic gains and social stability of the last four years --
The economic miracle that Schacht made happen was to be driven straight into the ground when Hitler decided to replace the brilliant Schacht with the economically iliterate fatass and trigger happy Goering in 1937
-- With Schacht gone the ongoing massive military expenditure was creating a debt with which the national civilian economy couldn't cope anymore. The overblown nazi military-industrial complex wasn't devised to built refrigeratos and hydroelectric power plants, it could however plunder and pillage neighboring states. Hitler and Goering expected that upcoming territorial expansion would provide the means of repaying the soaring national debt, by using the wealth and manpower of conquered nations. One problem here; they were invading absolute poverty stricken shitholes. In the last years of the third reich 25% of the abour force was made up of slaves, mostly poles and jews, many of them working at in the Asuchwitz labor camps for IG farben's rubber plants fueling the war effort. Perhaps the most clinically insane moment Hitler had was when he traded Schacht's developed economic theories for the idea that you could run a sustainable economy on slave labor and looting at the heart of Europe in the 20th century.
tl;dr: Hitler didn't fix the economy, Hjalmar Schacht did. Hitler replaced him with Göring and ran the economy into the ground again.
Last edited:
