Hitler Was Not a Good Economist

In some anti-Fed, pro-fiat money circles (yes, they exist) you will actually hear defenses of Adolf Hitler’s economic policy, on the grounds that it yielded a super economy for Germany. Germany was engaged in military Keynesianism. These writers mistake this for prosperity. It’s the error people make when they think World War II was a prosperous time for the United States.

Writes economist Albrecht Ritschl:

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.]

Thanks to Gary North.

Anonymous

Of course, in today’s lamestreamist terms, Hitler was an outstanding economist.

- He subsidized heavily.
- He “privatized” substantially (we all know, of course, that “privatization” has as much to do with the free market, as anti trust laws deal with preventing monopolies or Homeland Security provides security).
- He cared so much for worker’s health that special vacation colonies were erected by the state.
- He saw to very stringent government oversight of the financial sector and many other sectors of society.
- He encouraged foreign investment (especially from the US, ask the Bush fam.

Apart from subsidizing modern cinema and the arts, Hitler’s party, the NSDAP, also consisted of genuine “greenies”, sort of an avant garde green environmental party really.

So I imagine a sizeable chunk of today’s decent MSM brainwashed voting public would support a lot of what Hitler’s party stood for. Would be a nice experiment to translate their list of (25) political demands/issues into modern English (or Dutch for my own country) and make it part of these apps called voter guides. People will be able to choose among several standpoints on important issues and in the end the result will show them which of the parties deserves their vote. I’d think, thus anonymized , Hitler’s party would fare quite well among many liberals and neo-cons (i.e., social democrats and “liberals” in Europe).

Kind regs from / Amsterdam (clip) /,
Richard
Dan

Then you have comments like this about Hitler, the libertarian:

successfulbuild,

“Everyday life in most countries with the English common law system resembles the Rothbardian system.”
“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
“We stand for the maintenance of private property… We shall protect free-enterprise as the sole economic order.” — Adolf Hitler
Yep. It seems Adolf Hitler understood the totalitarian Libertarian system just fine, right down to the rejection of democracies and free communities.
In fact, without private property, and with equality, nazism could never have even existed.
You have to wonder why Libertarians don’t bring up their best philosopher — Adolf Hitler — more often.

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2012/09/does-anyone-deny-that-there-were-unprecedented-credit-stimulus-policies-during-hoover-administration.html#comments
Dan

Just so it’s clear, I find that comment by successfulbuild to be beyond absurd.
David

It’s totally insane. Libertarians are the polar opposite of Nazis. Nazis were economic central planners, social authoritarians, and foreign imperialists and militarists. That’s completely contrary to libertarian principles
Anonymous

The Greenbacker/MMT bunch are quite amusing, to be sure. They even talk about something called a “value-based currency” when speaking of Treasury emitted fiat notes. They have no concept of either scarcity or property, let alone the economic laws derived thereof. I actually left the End The Fed movement because of these folks, i felt that I was surrounded by socialists.
Jeremy

libertarian fascism……*gives successfulbuild a weird look.

Sorry but words just fail me. How can someone be libertarian and totalitarian at the same time. That’s just insane.

Adolph Hitler’s party was called the “National SOCIALIST German Workers Party.” Hardly libertarian by any measure. Man….some of these critics are incredibly desperate.
Anonymous

Here is Hans-Hermann Hoppe on the The Economic Doctrine of the Nazis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYEUHk16yk4

He argues that while Hitler’s economic policies were flawed, they were not as flawed as Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s.
JP

Check out Gary North’s crituque of Ellen Brown.
Anonymous

Oh trust me, I read that thing up and down when he posted it. However, if you bring up Gary North they just go into an ad hominem about Y2K. It’s ridiculous.