The Nazi Myth of Job Creation, Part - I

As total as the process of bringing society into line was, the success or failure of the regime depended on its ability to keep its promise to combat mass unemployment. In his very first radio address on 1 February, Hitler announced a “massive, blanket attack on unemployment” that was to overcome the problem “once and for all” within four years. On 6 July [1933] as well, he told his regional representatives that creating jobs was decisive: “History will only measure us on how we tackle this task.” Multiple factors played into the hands of Hitler and his regime. BY THE TIME HE CAME TO POWER, ECONOMIC RECOVERY WAS ALREADY UNDER WAY. The government also profited from job-creation measures taken under Papen and Schleicher that were only just beginning to bear fruit. In terms of announcing employment initiatives of his own, Hitler was conspicuously low-key in the weeks leading up to the Reichstag election. He enumerated the reasons for this in a cabinet meeting on 8 February: “The Reich government has to get 18–19 million voters behind it. There is no economic programme in the whole wide world capable of attracting the approval of such a large mass of voters.”

It was not until late May 1933 that the cabinet agreed on the Law for the Reduction of Unemployment. Known as the “First Reinhardt Programme” after Finance Ministry State Secretary Fritz Reinhardt, it allocated 1 billion reichsmarks for the creation of additional jobs. That sum was augmented by 500 million reichsmarks in the “Second Reinhardt Programme of September 1933,” which particularly concerned restoration and renovation projects and sought to boost the construction industry. The regime took other measures to ease the situation in the job market. The First Reinhardt Programme introduced interest-free “marriage loans” of up to 1,000 reichsmarks, which were contingent on newly-wed women leaving the workforce on the day of their wedding. Simultaneously the regime launched a campaign against the “double-earner syndrome” aimed at forcing women out of the labour market. The government subsidised emergency works projects and assigned jobless people to work in agriculture. It also expanded the Volunteer Labour Service, a state employment programme that had been introduced in the final years of the Weimar Republic. All these measures led to a great reduction in the numbers of people officially registered as unemployed. Between January 1933 and January 1934, the official number of jobless declined from 6 to 3.8 million people, although these figures were by no means completely reliable. In any case, the regime seemed to be keeping its promise and tackling the unemployment problem head-on, and this impression no doubt played a major role in increasing the aura surrounding the man at the top.

Hitler was no expert on questions of economic policy, but he had enough of an understanding of the subject to know that populist rhetoric alone would be insufficient. Incentives were needed to stimulate a self-perpetuating economic recovery. However, among the measures designed to jump-start the economy and create new jobs, the role played by the construction of the autobahn was less important than later myths about the Nazi “economic miracle” would have it. In his opening speech at the International Motor Show on 11 February 1933, Hitler had announced “the commencement and completion of a large-scale roadworks plan.” He proclaimed: “Just as horse-drawn traffic created paths and the railway system built the tracks it needed, motor-vehicle transport has to get the motorway it requires.” The idea was not fundamentally new. In the mid-1920s, an “Association for the Preparation of the Motorway Hanseatic Cities–Frankfurt–Basle” (Hafraba) had drawn up plans for an autobahn. Hitler had probably also read a pamphlet written by the Munich engineer Fritz Todt in late 1932 entitled “Road Construction and Management,” in which the author had stressed the “strategic” importance of motorway construction and calculated that Germany needed 5,000 to 6,000 kilometres of high-speed roads. In late March and early April, Hafraba’s commercial director gave two talks about the planned project in the Reich Chancellery. The motoring fan Hitler seized upon the idea “with great enthusiasm” but insisted on aiming for a national motorway network instead of a single stretch of road: “It would be a great achievement if we succeeded in realising the network under our regime.” At a conference with leading industrialists on 29 May, Hitler reiterated his intention to support the construction of the autobahn with all the means at his disposal. Tackling “the problem in its entirety” was the main task, Hitler proclaimed, adding: “Traffic in the years to come will take place on the largest of streets.”

On 27 June, the Law for the Establishment of the Undertaking “Reich Autobahn” came into force. Three days later, Todt was appointed inspector general of German roadways. On 23 September, Hitler personally dug the first turf for the stretch of motorway between Frankfurt and Darmstadt—a gesture with the propaganda aim of suggesting the Führer was leading the way in what was called the “labour battle.” But the short-term effect on unemployment of building the autobahn was only marginal. In 1933, NO MORE THAN 1,000 MEN were employed building the first stretch of motorway, and a year after Todt’s appointment ONLY 38,000 HAD BEEN GIVEN WORK. On the one hand, the number of newly registered cars almost doubled in 1933, compared with the previous year, and the number of people employed in the car industry had also grown substantially; on the other, compared with the United States, the level of car ownership in Germany was low. The main reason, as Hitler complained in a meeting to discuss the financing of the autobahn in September 1933, was that the German car industry had not adapted its production to reflect people’s actual income. “They keep building cars that are too heavy and are a long way from realising the goal of a car ranging in price from 1,000 to 1,200 reichsmarks,” Hitler said. Thus it was that in 1934 the idea was born of producing an affordable small car, the Volkswagen—the people’s car—that would be affordable to the working classes.
Continuation: https://telegra.ph/The-Nazi-Myth-of-Job-Creation-Part---II-04-24