Hitler was the head of a political party. In English, it was called the National Socialist German Workers Party, or "Nazi Party" for short. It was not called socialist for nothing. To imagine that this system was anything other than socialism is to parrot the Party Line of the Left ever since 1923. "No, no, no: the Nazis were not really socialists." Well, if they weren't, their policies surely resembled socialism. They believed in centralized control over the economy, and when they got into power in 1933, they established that control. This control grew even tighter after 1939, because of World War II.
GUNS, NOT BUTTER
The secret of the Nazi economy was spending on war. In a study of Nazi fiscal and monetary policy, economist Albrecht Ritschl concluded in 2000,
A critical reassessment of deficit spending during the Nazi recovery reveals a surprisingly small role for macroeconomic policy. Both the descriptive evidence and the results from multivariate time series forecasts suggest that recovery from the Great Depression was mainly driven by a rebound effect that was visible in the data already by late 1932. Up to around 1936, the German recovery was no more advanced than that of Britain or the United States, where far less expansionary fiscal policies were followed. However, even in Germany the fiscal impulse generated by the budget deficit was too small to be consistent with Keynesian demand stimulation under an income/expenditure mechanism. In order to explain the very high, at times two-digit growth rates of GNP during the recovery, deficits would have had to be two to five times higher than they actually were. Apparently, recovery was due to forces other than fiscal and monetary policy, just as in the cases of Britain and the United States. . . .
Nazi recovery appears less spectacular than was hitherto believed. Our results also indicate that government spending was dominated by war preparation already in a very early phase of the Nazi recovery. I find little justification for the popular interpretation that recovery was sparked off by non-military work-creation and the construction of the autobahn network. Investment in the autobahn reached sizable magnitudes only in 1936. All these projects pale in comparison with the rapid build-up of military expenditure, except for the year of 1933 when rearmament had not yet really begun. To secure the desired high speed of war preparation, the Nazi administration took early, often draconian steps to crowd out private demand. The growth in consumer spending fell short of the increase in national product, and the contribution of private investment to the recovery remained unimpressive.Strict control of private expenditure was partly achieved by maintaining taxation at the high levels reached during the depression years. [Deficit Spending in the Nazi Recovery, 1933-1938: A Critical Reassessment, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, pp. 16-17. In short, the government created jobs in factories preparing for war. Then it taxed workers so that they could not spend their income on consumer goods.
Hitler was no advocate of economic growth. He was an advocate of military expansion. Professor Tooze summarizes.
This backdrop is essential if we are to understand Hitler's refusal to accept the liberal gospel of economic progress. Economic growth could not be taken for granted and Hitler was by no means the only person to say so. As we have seen, the doctrine of economic life as a field of struggle was already fully formed in Mein Kampf and Hitler's 'Second book'. And this Darwinian outlook was only encouraged by the subsequent Depression. Given the density of Germany's population and Hitler's insistence on the inevitability of conflict arising for export-led growth, the conquest of new Lebensraum was certainly one means of raising Germany's per capita income level. Hitler could hardly have been more emphatic or consistent in his advocacy of this position. As we have seen, he made a point of reiterating this belief in the very first days of his new government in 1933. An aggressive foreign policy based on military strength was the only real foundation of economic prosperity (Wages of Destruction, pp. 145-46).http://www.garynorth.com/public/7009.cfmEllen Brown Denies That Hitler's National Socialism Was Socialistic and Keynesian.
Gary North
Ellen Brown praised Hitler's economic policy in Web of Debt. She wants America to adopt his economic policy.
I said in my critique that his centralizing economic policies were implemented only because of his political policy: centralization. I argued along the lines that Hayek did in The Road to Serfdom (1944): Hitler's centralizing economic policies led to his reign of terror.
http://www.garynorth.com/public/7248.cfm
