Ka-pi96 said:
Funny that Hjalmar Schacht lived until the 70s then. From the time Hitler appointed him as minister of economics until he resigned/was forced out due to opposing the war plan he did a very good job at fixing the German economy. The absolute focus on war in the economy wasn't until Hermann Göring was appointed after him. That is when Hitler went too far. If he had stuck by Schacht and his policies then the economy wouldn't have been solely dependent on a war happening. And as for the war, well it's easy to see where he went too far with that. If he had just tried to reclaim the land Germany lost after WWI rather than aggressively try and take much more. If he had just stopped after the Rhineland, Austria, Danzig and the rest of the Polish corridor then it wouldn't have exploded in to such a huge/long war with so many deaths. Retaking land that was considered German and that had been taken by the allies in what the Germans viewed as an overly harsh peace settlement was always a part of his campaign and drew plenty of support from the people. Much of it was even accomplished without war. Edit: Oh and for the voting thing again, let's not forget that fear of communism was also a pretty big reason he got votes. This in a country that had recently experience a failed socialist revolution as well. So in some ways you could say instead of voting against the status quo people were voting to protect it since they wanted a government that could effectively resist the spread of communism. |
Schacht was minister of economics from 1934-1937 those are key years of Hitlers economical changes towards a war economic. Schacht was a driving force behind it. He might have been opposed to it later but he certainly helped them when he was still in charge. When he started disagreeing too loudly he was imprisioned by the Nazis and very likely would have been killed had the War not ended in time. You found an example of a survivor of Hitler. While he is certainly and interesting historical character, his fate and importance to our discussion is also largely anecdotal.
Hitlers economical beliefs were quite atrocious and based on the belief that in order for a country to be prosperous it would have to exploit other regions (ironically he also believed this was incompatible with free market economy, when this is arguably what todays free market economy does), which fit well with his theory on races.
The first world war reparations probably were unfair, too harsh, unrealistic and furthermore a stupid move by the allies. They were a major contributing factor to the economical crisis that made the rise of a populist like Hitler possible. They thankfully realized this after the second world war and didn't repeat the same mistakes. (Well, at least the western allies didn't).
Austria was never a part of Germany prior to Hitler by the way, and was also never intended to be, actually the German council held a vote against including them because Prussia feared that their sole claim to power would be challenged by the equally powerful austrians.
Austrias annection destpite this, sort of proves my point actually, the first thing Hitler did was taking the national banks gold reserves to put them up against germanys raging inflation. That didn't happen as a result of just one year of changes in the economical politics.
Finally, yes, people gravitate to populist and extremist standpoints in times of crisis, and that also helped Hitler along. It doesn't change my original point that people at the time drastically underestimated him and even dissmissed him as a clown. Be careful with your vote, was what I was saying and that still stands.
This was an interesting discussion, but I think we have derailed this thread more than enough now. It's obvious we disagree on Hitlers economical prowess and leadership qualities, so maybe we should just leave it at that.
