Hitler's Ignorance of Economics

Ian Kershaw writes in his book “Hitler,1889-1936:Hubris” that Hitler was ‘wholly ignorant’ of economics but he knew how to achieve public support. That being said, the general view is that Hitler was one of the most powerful economic reformers in the 20th century. To support this, Sebastian Haffner said that Hitler as Reich Chancellor changed the unemployment of six million people to full employment without inducing inflation. In contrast, Kershaw argues that this view is nothing but a fallacy. He supports this by stating that Hitler’s solution to unemployment was not devaluation or tax cuts which he was against, but massive deficit spending. For example, he depleted his nation’s gold reserves from 937 million ReichMarks to 72 million ReichMarks in just four years. Also, statistics from Dan Silverman show that unemployment was actually only reduced to 2.5 million people which is a far cry from the full employment lie that people are led to believe. Furthermore, unemployed Marxians, Socialists, Jews, pacifists and refugees were not included in statistics. Yet, the falsehood of full employment was used by Nazi Germany as huge propaganda, which lives on even today. Kershaw also argues that Hitler’s invasion of Rhineland was to divert the attention of the German public from domestic food shortages and unemployment. Kershaw writes that 1935 Germany was not an economically prosperous place. Food prices had been raised by 8 per cent and overall living costs were higher by 5.4 per cent. This was partly due to Hitler’s refusal to lift ineffectual price controls. In addition to that, Hermann Goring, Hitler’s sidekick, chose to use foreign exchange reserves to get food instead of rearmament to avoid food rationing which would harm morale. However, this hindered rearmament and the only way to get more weapons then was to expand ‘living space’, that is, waging war. Hitler had to juggle between keeping power, reducing unemployment and the rearmament of Germany. Hitler’s dilemma