Hitler's financiers

Also, you, Mr domobran 7, stated that Adolf Hitler "essentially used a wartime economy to get the country out of depression"

Well, I don't really agree with that at all.
Germany was still producing consumer goods right up to the declaration of TOTALIER KREIG in 1943. Only then could they truly claim to have economic arrangements that reflected wartime necessity. This was the principal reason why Albert Speer was appointed as Reich Minister for Armament Production, to get rid of the "slack" in the economy, to put it on war footing.

The only country in Europe that was truly on a war footing before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe was the Soviet Union.
I'm not sure if Spain ever had such a thing as a war economy. It was a civil war, so national policy was not a unified concept until the war was over. And the last thing that the Franco regime could afford to do was to go back to war alongside their Fascist friends, or with anyone else for that matter

 

I already knew that... but:

Problem with Communism is that it sounds good enough that many will try. And because the Communist end-state goal is fundamentally contrary to human nature, what happens is that you end up with a cure that is worse than a disease: genocide in the name of humanity and progress. And once it is over and whole project has failed, you only need to wait for a little while for a next bunch of idiots to come around and claim "but it was fundamentally good idea, they just screwed up the execution".

This, in my view, makes it more dangerous than Nazism, because it is much easier to fall for it.

At any rate there is a difference between Communist theory and Communism in practice, which was precisely what I had described it as.

I have read the Manifesto. I am yet to read the Kapital, though.

OK, thanks. Still...

I do remember that United States only recovered from the Great Depression in 1939. The US rearmament programme began in 1938., in order to help rearm Great Britain and France following the Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia.

And Germany of course had been arming for war for a lot longer. Its rearmament actually began in 1932. at latest, when Krupp presented its "agricultural tractor", which is to say, the drive part of what was to become Panzer I. In 1934., first serial-production vehicles for driver training began arriving, followed by Serie 2 which were actual tanks - turret, gun and everything. Serie 2 started arriving in September 1934. German economy started recovering in 1933., but again there is a question whether it was only due to the rearmaments programme. However, now we have two cases where recovery started about a year after the rearmament programme began.

First Soviet five-year plan began in 1928., and was, as described here, essentially a wartime mobilization programme implemented during the peacetime. And of course, Soviet Union never was really hit by the Great Depression, for multiple reasons.

Of course, then you have Great Britain, which started recovering from the Great Depression in 1931., while rearmament started only in 1934.

 

Just reminds me of a funny soccer joke. Who knows best what the **** off-side is. Women. Men just keep on telling what it means.

 

Didn´t Marx point out that the diminishing living economy of the workers was a key point to the "revolution" and socialism. If there was any level of gaining better living standard the possibility of socialism was getting smaller as people were happier even though not so much but anyway there was more butter on the bread. Going down in living standard, and you were ready to such actions like revolutionary promises of how to remove the money-maker factory owners and then the money would be shared equally. I could be wrong but just something I seem to recall from history lessons 40 years ago...

 

I believe he did. It is at any rate something various Communist organizations did - organizing terrorist attacks and in general doing everything to make life as difficult as possible, simply to create conditions for revolution.

IIRC, one Russian emperor was murdered by Communists because he intended to introduce reforms which would have made life far better in the Empire.

 

Much like the run up to the American Revolution...

Alexander II was not assassinated because of reforms he planned to initiate. As he had initiated these reforms at the beginning of his reign, and political pushback had forced him to undo some of them. This and the belief that he did not go far enough with his reforms was why he was assassinated by a Populist/Socialist(not communist) group.

 

The German State did not own Heinkel, Krup, Porsche, Messerschmitt, etc. These private entities all competed with each other for contracts and profits. Consumer goods were still being made up until 1942/43. The Nazi state may have guided the direction of the economy a la the New Deal, but they did not own the means of production nor discourage private enterprise.

 

Yes, the nazis had perhaps even too much competition and could not concentrate on the best workable solutions.

 

Private ownership does not mean free market. All those firms you listed? They essentially did what Hitler ordered. It is entirely possible to have privately owned corporations and a socialist economy. In fact, large private corporations want socialism, because it enables them to remove potential competition by small and medium enterprises.

But even ignoring that, Hitler's economy was still socialism. Command economy is still command economy, even if state doesn't formally own the means of production. I only started reading it, but Reimann's "The Vampire Economy" describe the issue rather well. This letter is an excellent example:

That is socialism; there is no other name for it. Competition you speak of was competition for government's favor. While such competition does exist in capitalism, it is especially important in socialism, where everything goes through the government. So hardly a proof of a free market economy.

There is also The Behemoth and Soviet and Nazi Economic Planning in the 1930s, although I had only started reading them. But latter at least also described Nazi "four year plans" - such plans are the hallmarks of a planned economy, i.e. socialism. This is from the latter book:

Again, that is socialism.

EDIT: And of course, the 25 point manifesto by NSDAP:

 

Nazi Economics was very similar to the New Deal, hands-on capitalism and government intervention instead of laissez faire economics.

 

Franz Neumann, a Nazi economist and author has also written that Nazi Economics was free enterprise with the government hand guiding, a la the New Deal.

 

Exactly, which is why all the big business entrepreneurs in Germany backed Hitler. The Night of the Long Knives both literally and figuratively put to death the radical economic reforms preferred by Rohm and the real Socialists.