A few thoughts about January 6, 2021

Revnak

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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 But even there, their economical policy wasn't some initiated overhaul of the inefficient, outdated German farming model, it simply hinged on capturing arable land in Eastern Europe and then callously letting the occupied people starve to death while Germans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.
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.
Edit: note, I’m just butting in to say this because I think the Nazis definitely had economic elements to their ideology. I don’t really agree with Earcaxe at all about his various assessments here, 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.
 
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Eacaraxe

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You're using what sources to back this up exactly?
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.

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 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.

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.

...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.
That wasn't a bug, it was a feature.

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.
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.

And, the Nazis did have a plan. Same as the one they had in place before the war. Ensure their creditors were either Nazis themselves, or disempowered to call in their debts. You're still assuming there was a "private sector" under Nazism analogous to private sectors under Western capitalism when there wasn't, the very presumption I was challenging.

...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.
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.
 
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stroopwafel

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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.
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.

Post war economies are the complete opposite. They spend very little on militarization(espescially Europe) and have aging populations and low birth rates. The one factor pressing most on economic growth is unproductivity and high social and welfare costs plus skyrocketing healthcare. That wouldn't be a problem in the Nazi economy ofcourse b/c everyone that is unproductive or 'inferior' is taken out of the equation.

The Nazi economy could make less and earn much more simply because of their hateful ideology. You could still apply similair Darwinian philosophy on economics and have very impressive figures. The post-war economies aren't necessarily praised for their utilitarian model but rather the moral victory over this kind of ideology,
 

Agema

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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.
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.

I think you're also underestimating these "blocking units". They were NKVD, and assigned as standard to many Red Army formations to assist with discipline and prevent retreats. They did not, however, shoot retreaters to anything like the extent sometimes portrayed, overwhelmingly they simply detained them. They did also manage the penal battalions who were more likely to be shot for "cowardice", but even then that was uncommon.

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.

I think had they won their economy would have collapsed by conventional terms, except that they'd have just looted anything and everything they ndeeded from the countries that they'd conquered, and collapsed their economies instead.
 
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Revnak

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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.
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.
 

Eacaraxe

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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.
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".

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.
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.

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.
We're calling the Great Depression economic stability, now?

One might also note that the entire Arsenal of Democracy schtick was essentially a long term strategy.
One in the achievement of which global strategic goal, precisely?

...which allowed them the benefit of not having to worry too much (that said, war debt did still contribute to tanking the British Empire).
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.
 

ObsidianJones

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So there's an accusation of Insiders


Having alarms removed the day before, less protection than usual, and the unsubstantiated accusations of Tours in the Capitol when Tours have been closed since March


And still have been closed to the fact that you can't even book a tour now if you wanted


Oh, and things like this


If you don't want to watch the whole thing, skip to 2:25 where a woman with a microphone is giving details instructions on how to get into break into another room that rioters are in to (in her own words) "take the building".
 

Satinavian

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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.
They 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.
 
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Revnak

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They 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.
This misses one last element

They wanted to privatize more of the economy out of a fetishization of private ownership

Gotta remember the mass privatization they engaged in too, out of the same sort of nonsensical beliefs that are perpetuated by neoliberals today.
 

Elijin

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Few pages late, but I've never understood America's fetish like obsession with veterans.

Where I live, I've never heard anyone referred to as a veteran unless they served in either of the big two. Otherwise they're service members and ex service members.

Then again, America has a really weird hero worship // demonizing relationship with its services, which isn't normal.
 
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Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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Few pages late, but I've never understood America's fetish like obsession with veterans.
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.
 

Thaluikhain

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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.
Or until they become unemployed/homeless, whereupon they are forgotten.