You can care immensely about economic policy and put a shitload of emphasis on it without that policy being in any way effective. As an example, see Reaganomics.You're using what sources to back this up exactly? The seminal work on the Nazi Economy, Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction: The making and breaking of the Nazi economy, very convincingly backs up the idea that the Nazis never really cared about having a sustainable economy. What they wanted was massive and quick armament, something initially accomplished by the economical dark magic of Hjalmar Schacht, then later by the use of MeFo bills which was essentially the German state buying everything on credit. The Anschluss and annexation of Czechoslovakia provided Germany with the gold reserves needed to keep a quickly tanking economy floating, but had it not been for the start of the war and the special conditions it imposed on the economy, Germany would have faced an absolutely massive solvency crisis no later then 1942.
The only part of the economy that the Nazis really, really cared about was agricultural output, a hard learned lesson from the food shortages of WW1. But even there, their economical policy wasn't some initiated overhaul of the inefficient, outdated German farming model, it simply hinged on capturing arable land in Eastern Europe and then callously letting the occupied people starve to death while Germans got their lands and food.
In terms of effective economic models, it wasn't. Both the Western Allies and the USSR got more war material for their money then Germany did and Germany also got the worst parts of both the free market and planned economy without ever reaping the benefits of either. Add to that the obsession with autarky and the absolutely insane amounts of money invested in setting up slave labor industry in Poland and you can hardly call Nazi economic policy effective.
Frankly, Arendt (still), because of everything I've ever read she's the only scholar to have ever engaged on the level of understanding Nazism and the full social, political, and economic ramifications of fascism, as opposed to continuing the trend of refusing to evolve discourse surrounding it past the level of Why We Fight.You're using what sources to back this up exactly?
That doesn't contradict a word of what I said, and what you didn't quote of my post is why. Having a sustainable, stable economy was not in the Nazi party's best interest; in fact, it was entirely contrary to it as having a sustainable, stable economy meant having an economy that could exist independent from the Nazi party.The seminal work on the Nazi Economy, Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction: The making and breaking of the Nazi economy, very convincingly backs up the idea that the Nazis never really cared about having a sustainable economy.
That wasn't a bug, it was a feature....The Anschluss and annexation of Czechoslovakia provided Germany with the gold reserves needed to keep a quickly tanking economy floating, but...Germany would have faced an absolutely massive solvency crisis no later then 1942. [...] it simply hinged on capturing arable land in Eastern Europe and then callously letting the occupied people starve to death while Germans got their lands and food.
Of course, neither did the Allies have a plan for a sustainable global post-war economy and they won. I'm sure this'll be the part where you retort, "the Marshall plan and Bretton Woods". I'll go ahead and answer that by preemptively asking how well Bretton Woods worked in the long run, and pointing out the Marshall plan itself was only entertained and adopted in the context of the brewing Cold War, once it was well understood neither Molotov nor Stalin had interest in conceding eastern Europe economically to the West.Tooze points out that even had they somehow miraculously won WW2, the Nazis would still be boned because their economy was haphazard and they had no plan for handling all the massive deficit they had run up prior to and during the war. Debts that the private sector would want repaid after a decade of being paid in IOUs and promises of future riches once Greater Germania existed.
My point is the Nazis didn't have a private economy in any genuine sense of the word. They had the illusion of one, and analysis of it founded in Western, capitalist, terms of existing in a spectrum between statism and anarchism completely breaks down due to failing to recognize Nazi Germany's partocratic nature....but pointing out that the planned but private economy of the Nazis was an essential part of their ideology is very important to me as an anti-fascist.
I think what Geth meant and what you yourself also admit is that for the Nazi economy to grow it needs to constantly feed it's immense war machine and invade new territories or it would ran out of credit and into a solvency crisis. Any country that is rapidly arming itself has high economic growth but it can only be sustained for so long. You also need very high birth rates to keep that kind of economy going.That's exactly the problem with Western analysis, the foundational assumption (to continue the trend of othering and demonizing Nazism, and by extension justifying Western ideologies, economies, and policies) was the Nazis were incompetent, irrational, and corrupt. Ergo, the conclusion the Nazis were absolutely competent and rational, and achieved exactly the ends they desired politically and economically for the time they were in power, can't be entertained, because God forbid we admit a totalitarian regime was in fact totalitarian. Because if we did that, then by golly, we might have to follow Arendt down her heretical path of actually considering what totalitarianism actually means.
This is questionable. I think it's more that Hitler believed counterattacks would throw the Soviets back and endangered troops would be relieved just so long as they held position, or that retreats would encourage routs and greater losses. He would often allow evaculation operations for major pockets if the troops would otherwise be lost.It's also in absolutely no way exceptional. Hitler himself intentionally sacrificed huge numbers of German soldiers on the eastern front by issuing suicidal no-retreat orders.
snip
Germany seemed to want to control the economy only inasmuch as they needed to to conduct war. For all that they had a notional total control as a totalitarian state, the idea was to not really exercise it unless they had to. Similar, from my knowledge, I'm not sure the Nazis really had much in the way of a "plan" or much of a coherent ideology beyond making it up as they went along for whatever was convenient at the time.snip
Arendt’s answer to fascism was a more civil form of Nationalism. She was properly cynical in her analysis, but idiotic in her conclusions. If there are no human rights that stand up to the tyranny of a nation, then citizenship is itself not a “right” that can stand up to such tyranny. It is as fragile as the rights of refugees. She was a fool.Frankly, Arendt (still), because of everything I've ever read she's the only scholar to have ever engaged on the level of understanding Nazism and the full social, political, and economic ramifications of fascism, as opposed to continuing the trend of refusing to evolve discourse surrounding it past the level of Why We Fight.
Strange way of saying "a literal firsthand source, being a German Jew who was a refugee from Nazi Germany who lived through the war and was an archivist after it who also happened to be present for the trials of Nazi war criminals".So a source outdated by about 40 years that also didn't do a deep dive into the Nazi economical model or its actual function, got it.
No, my claim is the modern status quo is to other and demonize the Nazi party in sum to preserve Cold War political fictions rather than engage in genuine truth-seeking. Fallacious analyses of the Nazi economic model included. The part of your quote I bolded? That's the rub, beginning and end, of my point. Nazi economic policy was an extension of Nazi partocracy, and for good or ill, it was entirely effective at achieving its desired goal.You are right here, the problem is that this isn't an effective economy. The fight for resources, the promotion of cronies and sycophants and constant loss of efficiency, synergy and resources due to infighting was a political tool to keep the party and the private sector in line and power firmly in the hands of the top brass (mainly Hitler, initially Göring and later Speer). Hence you are contradicting yourself, since you claimed modern status quo is to demonize Nazi economical effectiveness. Now you are saying their goal was the complete opposite.
We're calling the Great Depression economic stability, now?The Allies, on the other hand, had economies that had been stable prior to the war and thus could soak up a fair amount of wartime debt.
One in the achievement of which global strategic goal, precisely?One might also note that the entire Arsenal of Democracy schtick was essentially a long term strategy.
Well, at least until the US started running massive balance of payment deficits, lost control of the USD's value overseas, and could no longer back the USD with gold specie, anyhow....which allowed them the benefit of not having to worry too much (that said, war debt did still contribute to tanking the British Empire).
They wanted the economy to provide the tools for warfareGermany seemed to want to control the economy only inasmuch as they needed to to conduct war. For all that they had a notional total control as a totalitarian state, the idea was to not really exercise it unless they had to. Similar, from my knowledge, I'm not sure the Nazis really had much in the way of a "plan" or much of a coherent ideology beyond making it up as they went along for whatever was convenient at the time.
This misses one last elementThey wanted the economy to provide the tools for warfare
They wanted the jews out of the economy because of ideology
They wanted the economy to be autark to isolate themself from shortages due to failing trade be it political or economically caused
They wanted to keep inflation low because everyone remembered hyperinflation and were willing to manipulate the currency for that
Otherwise they mostly didn't care and let the capitalist system they inherited run largely unchanged.
Isn't it great that arming and training them never came back to bite us in the butt?
Fetishised until they oppose Republican leaders, at which point they are incompetent frauds who lied about their service and didn't deserve their merit awards, or just "loser" POWs who committed "serious wrongdoing" in their military careers.Few pages late, but I've never understood America's fetish like obsession with veterans.
Or until they become unemployed/homeless, whereupon they are forgotten.Fetishised until they oppose Republican leaders, at which point they are incompetent frauds who lied about their service and didn't deserve their merit awards, or just "loser" POWs who committed "serious wrongdoing" in their military careers.
They missed a trick by not having Rambo fight them in the fourth one.Isn't it great that arming and training them never came back to bite us in the butt?