Adolf Hitler and German Heavy Industry, 1931–1933*

George W. F. Hallgarten

The Journal of Economic History, 1952, vol. 12, issue 3, 222-246

Abstract: Adolf Hitler's position in the economic life of his days has been the object of ardent discussions from his early beginnings down to the present time. The Marxist and leftist view which sees in the Führer one of the most outstanding servants of German monopoly capitalism has been contested not only by Hitler's own followers but, to an even greater extent, by the spokesmen and legal representatives of the German industrial circles, who wished to disclaim any responsibility for the disastrous events of that period. A scientific investigation of this problem is the more imperative, since die preponderant role played by socioeconomic factors in the rise of the Führer is quite obvious. A leader of an insignificant little group who distinguished himself from the many antiproletarian dictator candidates of his time mainly by his qualities as a demagogue, rooted in his neurotic reaction to the experience of social decline, Hitler in 1923 suffered a complete political fiasco, because his following was too small. While times of full employment and economic boom were unfavorable for his party, his movement benefited greatly from periods of depression, such as die one that followed the stabilization of the mark in 1923, and especially from the big depression after 1929. This depression not only caused the ruined masses of the German middle class to follow a leader who knew how to fight his social decline by donning a field-grey uniform but it also made some big German producers more eager than before to listen to a man who seemed to be conquering a disaster that had been caused, to a large extent, by their own rationalization policy.

Date: 1952
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