I think he was insane, especially by the end of the war, when he was taking all those 'medications'. Realistically, everything, anyone says here is an opinion...
I might just be Friedrich, everyone's thoughts are their opinion, and they are just as valid as anyone else's, usually.
Which brings me to my favorite quote: "Opinions are like assholes...everybody has one!" (Sgt. O'Neill in 'Platoon')
There's a lot of mythology floating around here. By 1924, the German economy was in shambles. The Dawes Plan restructured Germany's economy, creating a national bank and consolidating strategic industries into massive cartels. Huge foreign loans were used to get the economy running again. The crash of 1929 created further problems for the German economy, and American banker Owen D. Young was sent by the Allied Reparations Committee to draft a new plan easing German reparations payments. By this time, the seeds were sown for the future National Socialist economy--a loose form of State Capitalism where both the Big Bourgeoisie and Petit Bourgeoisie joined together with the government to squeeze the living shit out of the German working class. Hitler had nothing to do with this massive economic reorganization. Hitler's rise from total obscurity to the leader of a para-military political party can be attributed to one--and only one--thing: money. Lots of money. The Nazi Party had a lot of funding to get it off the ground. Read Frank Sutton's Wall Street and The Rise of Hitler for a detailed account of this process. Hitler was a product of the growing international banking system. Once in control, the Nazis slashed wages, destroyed labor unions, greatly extended the working day, enacted forced labor, prison labor, and slave labor. Workers' rights were abolished and the German People were put under the yoke. And that's how HITLER steered the German economy. The German people suffered terribly under his reign.
Buit, Knight, people were suffering before his rule as well. Massive unemployment, increasing poverty, politicians unwilling to risk unpopularity in order to solve problems. Hitler's solution was short term, certain groups suffered but the economy did turn around through a Keynesianesque effort at state spending as Sweden had already started. Goring plundered German overseas securities, Eastern European states were coralled into trade deals and, of course, the gold reserves of Austria and the Czech Republic helped fuel the arms drive. But it was all short term, kids raiding the piggy bank with no thought to the future. Jumbo
