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East Germany Mobilization for War
National socialism added to authoritarianism the politically
charismatic idea of the "movement," i.e., the Third Reich's
mobilization for war. To that end, Nazi economic policy
emphasized accelerated rearmament and autarchy, and the German
chemical industry developed artificial rubber, plastics,
synthetic textiles, and other substitute products to make the
Third Reich independent of imported raw materials. Because the
NSDAP had won the support of German industrialists, private
ownership, although subordinated to party control, was left
intact. The government also began an extensive public works
program and expanded and improved the transportation system.
The Four-Year Plan, adopted in 1936, resulted in a conflict
between Hermann Göring's nationalist approach, which aimed at
removing Germany from the international economy through
industrial self-sufficiency, and the internationalist approach to
industry advocated by Hjalmar Schacht, minister of economic
affairs. Göring, at the time a minister without portfolio,
prevailed with his "guns versus butter" slogan.
His Four-Year Plan Office assumed responsibility for
developing production quotas and market guidelines. Major
industrial enterprises, particularly war matériel producers such
as Krupp (steel and armaments), I.G. Farben (chemicals), and
Siemens (shipbuilding), were expanded. The enlarged war matériel
industry significantly reduced unemployment. Owing to the
preferential wage scales offered by war matériel producers, large
numbers of Germans abandoned agriculture to seek jobs in
industry. During World War II, the Nazi regime instituted a labor
draft and also used disenfranchised foreign and slave labor to
supply the growing needs of the war economy.
A most significant feature of the Third Reich was the formal
institutionalization of a system of terror made possible by the
SS. In the mid-1930s, Himmler's SS assumed control over both the
Gestapo and the Nazi concentration camp system, thereby
solidifying Hitler's totalitarian control
(see Holocaust
, this
ch.). Gestapo arrests, which had focused originally on communists
and socialists, were extended to other social groups, most
particularly to Jews. The concentration camps, which were filled
with the Third Reich's undesirable elements during mobilization,
were to supply forced labor for SS-run projects and industries
during World War II. Meanwhile, the attention of the German
masses, for whom there had been no real social revolution, was
diverted ideologically toward the goal of lebensraum, which was
to be achieved by coercion and military conquest. By the late
1930s, mesmerized Germans, roaring their approval in mass
demonstrations, were ready to follow their führer to war.
Data as of July 1987
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