The Slump 1

The Response in Germany

Structure of lecture

• Causes / consequences of Slump

• German responses under Nazism– Job creation– Family policies– Social protection – Racism, sexism and health policy– Social repression and policing

• Conclusion: Nazism and modernity

World War 1 and its Aftermath

• Collapse of European empires• Russian revolution spreads 1917-20• Treaty of Versailles:

– USA & creation national democracies– French demands for reparations– Weimar Republic created in Germany

• Post-war economic instability– German default on repayments and French

occupation of the Ruhr (1921) - inflation

International provenance 1930s Slump

• Structure of international debt post-1918• Wall Street Crash (1929): share price collapse

– Loss of confidence follows mass speculation– Run on banks: recall international debts– International run on gold: – Reduced money supply – trade slump

• Reaction: mass currency devaluation (1931-4) and tariff barriers raised

• Falling volume of world trade

Germany 1929-40

• Worst casualty– 8-9 million out of work– Value of overseas trade drops 50%

• Radical electorate: economic instability– Rise of KPD / NPD: both anti-Weimar– Hitler elected 1933: slogan ‘Bread and work’

• Policy target = Volksgemeinschaft (repudiation of class conflict)

Nazi Social Policy: job creation (1933-6)

Continues of schemes started by Von Papen• Waterways, road, bridges, railways.• Grants/loans for house building/repair• Tax exemption to industry hiring extra men• Migration from country to town halted• Promotion motor transport (Volkswagon)• Preference to married men and long-term

unemployed• Youth: labour/military service & Hitler Youth

Industrial rationalisation

• Cartels created and technology promoted

• Nationalisation of aviation, aluminium, petro-chemicals etc. (key sectors)

• 1934: ‘New Plan’ of four year industrial expansion

• Autarchy promoted through investment in industrial import-substitution

• Protectionism

Family Policy (get women off the labour market)

• Marriage loans provided if wife leaves labour market for good

• Loan repaid over time, but debt reduction x number of children produced

• Loan = tokens to be exchanged for household goods

• Medals for reproduction:– Bronze= 6– Silver = 8– Gold = 10

“ Work makes you free”

• Social insurance nationalised under party control:

• Unemployment fund used for job creation

• Plans for tax-funded pensions (1940s)

• DAF (Labour Front) replaces TUs– Promotes firm-based welfare– Prize lists of ‘good’ employers

• Unemployment disappears

Paying for it

• Wages centrally determined (no wage bargaining)

• Party controls central bank (& credit)• Debt repayment renegotiated / repudiated• Post-1935: rearmament and autarky

– Import substitution– Closed trade pacts (Balkans: S. America)– Reichsmark kept off foreign exchanges

Reinforces Pan-Germanism and Lebensraum

The downside: the police state

• Loss of democratic rights– KPD / SPD eradicated– No free trade unions– Post 1934 (Reichstag fire), no elections

• Racism– Social policies to improve German stock – Eradication moral / physical ‘deviants’ (prelude to

Holocaust)

• Police (established and SS) under party control and rule of law disappears

Conclusions

• Nazi modernity: the new– Futurist/ imperial architecture : – High tech economy & industrial modernisation– Triumph of scientific imperative

• The traditional– Traditional family: domestication of women– Creation of the 1000-year Empire

(subordination of inferior races – egs of UK and USA – as guarantor of social progress)