Economics and the Third Reich

             "He had restored to Germany her self-respect, and recreated orderliness out of the chaos and distress that had followed her defeat in 1918." Sir Neville Henderson, Failure of a Mission, 1940.
             There is no doubt, that if the Third Reich had ended in 1939, then Adolf Hitler would have been viewed as one of the greatest economic leaders ever to come to power. Hitler succeeded in minimising unemployment, creating mass labour projects that benefited Germany, restoring German agriculture, working with Big Business, and overall, restoring the strong economy that had previously belonged to Germany; one that had been seriously affected after the Versailles Peace Treaty and the Great Depression. This economic recovery could only come about as a result of the totalitarian regime led by Hitler.
             Hitler came into power in 1932; inheriting an economy that had been ravaged by the effects of World War 1 and the subsequent peace treaty at Versailles. After Versailles, Germany suffered mass unemployment, had to de-militarise and was left bearing the load of the First World War. Unemployment in 1932 had reached record highs for that region- 5 575 000. Germany's Gross National Product at that same time was also at a low of 38 billion Reichsmarks (Hindsley et al: 255). By 1938, unemployment had been reduced to 429 000, and by 1939 a labour shortage had arisen. As well as this the GNP had been increased to 130 billion Reichsmarks (all figures quoted from Hindlsey et al: 255; and Mason: 150). This dramatic shift in figures can be directly attributed to Hitler: his organisational skills and his marvellous ability to unify the German people through his party-orchestrated propaganda and fiery speeches inciting German nationalism.
             The main economic focus of the Nazi party was unemployment. The numbers of unemployed in Germany fell due to a variety of reasons.
             One of these reasons being the number of women in the workforce decreased conside...

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