The Four Year Plan involved close collaboration between members of certain industries – again, particularly I. G. Farben – and Nazis in high positions. It represented to some extent a clear illustration of the proliferation of spheres of competence and institutional rivalries in the Nazi state, as the powers of Goering conflicted with those of the ministers of labour (Seldte), agriculture (Darré) and economics (Schacht). Schacht in fact resigned his post as Minister of Economics in November 1937, partly because of these conflicts (and was dismissed as President of the Reichsbank a little over a year later, in January 1939). There were both party–state conflicts and conflicts between different sections of the party. There were, for example, conflicts between party agencies concerned with rearmament, and those more concerned with aspects of consumer satisfaction or popular opinion, such as the DAF.
These developments have been variously interpreted. While rearmament has often been held up as one of the prime factors in German economic recovery in the 1930s, Richard Overy suggests that it was only increasingly important after 1936 and that in fact attempts to orientate the economy towards war actually slowed down the rate of recovery and growth, partly because of the resistance of some cartelized industries to Nazi policies. Yet Overy plays down Volker Berghahn’s emphasis on what the latter calls a deliberate ‘unhinging’ of the economy from 1936, when traditional economic considerations were discarded and ultimate economic salvation was predicated on a successful war of conquest.14 The relationships between industry, party and state are also more complex than sometimes assumed. Older debates between a clearly untenable Marxist interpretation of fascism as the last-ditch stand of a capitalist state in crisis and an alternative view emphasizing the ‘primacy of politics’ have been displaced by more open analyses of the complex combination of factors at play and the contingency of historical developments. Some industries benefited from close collaboration with the state; others attempted to resist interference. Also, while the Nazis attempted to control the direction of economic policy, they were by no means always successful, nor could they be, given their own partly mutually contradictory aims. Moreover, the successes of economic recovery and a return to full employment by 1936 had by 1939 generated a shortage of skilled labour, necessitating the conscription of workers into compulsory labour service on certain projects. There were also conflicts between aspects of Nazi ideology and the demands of reality: women, for example, despite Nazi views of their proper place being in the home, in fact participated in increasing numbers in paid employment outside the home, even before the more acute shortages of (literally) manpower in wartime years.
What is quite clear is that, far from achieving a social revolution, the effects of Nazi economic policies on society represented in large measure a continuation and perhaps exacerbation of previous socioeconomic trends. Realities under Nazi rule by no means corresponded with pre-1933 election promises. While the return to full employment did mean jobs and a steady income for many, the associated withdrawal of trade union rights and collective bargaining, as well as the very variable rates of pay and conditions, rendered the experience at best an ambiguous one. Despite attempts by the All-German Federation of Trade Unions (ADGB) to reach a compromise with the new regime in April 1933, autonomous trade unions had been unequivocally smashed; and although many workers were prepared somewhat cynically to enjoy any holidays or outings offered to them by organizations such as Strength through Joy, few really swallowed much of the propaganda about the ‘harmonious factory community’ and the like. While concessions were made to small businesses, insofar as they did not conflict with major political aims, other demands of small retailers were not met; in particular, big department stores continued to flourish – albeit increasingly in ‘Aryan’ hands, as Jewish owners were ousted or forced to sell up at ludicrously low prices. While peasants were praised in Nazi ideology, the measures taken under Darré (who had replaced Hugenberg as Minister of Agriculture in June 1933) were by no means universally popular. The control of the production, distribution and pricing of foodstuffs by the Reich Food Estate and the control of the inheritance of farms under the Entailed Farm Law met with the hostility of considerable numbers of peasants in different areas, varying with local conditions.
It is clear that, while there were certain fundamental changes – particularly in the increased political direction of the economy, with the attempt to control and subordinate economic development to the goal of preparation for war – Germany continued to be an industrializing society with certain endemic conflicts and strains. Historians have tended to agree that the ‘national community’ was created neither in reality nor in popular social perceptions, as far as the dominant ‘Aryan’ community was concerned, although there are lively controversies over the usefulness of the term in understanding the dynamics of Nazi society. What is more than clear, however, is that the ‘national community’ became very much a reality, in every respect, from the perspective of those who were excluded and persecuted.15
The Radicalization of the Regime
Hitler had two main aims, expressed in Mein Kampf and the later Second Book: to create a ‘pure’ racial community in Germany; and to expand Germany’s living space, dominating central Europe and, eventually, seeking world mastery. Hitler’s anti-Semitism, while finding resonance in the widespread prejudices against Jews, clearly went way beyond existing concepts of discrimination in its eventual practical implications. Hitler’s grandiose visions of the future of his Thousand Year Reich, while having much in common with conservative–nationalist desires for revision of the Treaty of Versailles, also went some considerable way beyond them in terms of global aspirations. While Hitler lost little time in jettisoning the political framework of the Weimar Republic, it took rather longer to transform the relationship of the Nazis to the old elites, whose miscalculated support had brought Hitler to power and who were essential for the effective use of that power. Moreover, Hitler had simultaneously to play to a number of galleries: to public opinion, dependent as his charisma was on repeated popular acclaim; to the Nazi Party activists, who were often frustrated at the apparent stalling of momentum and the incompleteness of the ‘national revolution’; and to the established economic and military elites whose cooperation was vital to the realization of Hitler’s ends. Added to these sometimes conflicting pressures was Hitler’s distinctive style of leadership, which allowed the duplication, indeed proliferation, of state and party offices and functions, and blurred the lines of leadership and responsibility. But on issues that mattered to Hitler he pursued his aims with ruthlessness and appropriate brutality. While Hitler’s intentions alone are not sufficient to explain the pattern of developments in the Third Reich – after all, Hitler had to attempt to realize his intentions under given circumstances and not always welcome conditions – the chronology of Nazi Germany reveals a progressive radicalization of the regime in line with Hitler’s pursuit of his overriding aims.
Anti-Semitic violence in peacetime was powered to a considerable degree by Nazi Party radicals, and Hitler sought to distance himself somewhat – at least as far as his public image was concerned – from the consequences of the more extreme or less successful of their actions, while at the same time continually pressing forwards with apparently more ‘legal’ forms of discrimination and persecution. The attempted boycott of Jewish shops on 1 April 1933 was rapidly called off, but systematic discrimination against Jews rapidly continued in a series of measures to remove Jews from professional and cultural life. In 1935 the so-called Nuremberg Laws – discussed well in advance, but announced in a last-minute way at the Nuremberg Party rally – sought to give legal validity to racial discrimination. Under the Reich Citizenship Law two categories of citizenship were introduced, with Jews given second-class citizenship, in that they could not become Reichsbürger with full political rights. Under the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, Jews were no longer permitted to marry those of ‘Aryan’ German or related extraction, nor – a deliberate affront in its moral implications – to employ ‘Aryan’ German women under the age of forty-five in their households. Consideration was given to the vexatious question of Mischlinge – those of mixed extraction who, in Nazi eyes, might be deemed to ‘pollute’ German blood. The milder view of excluding ‘half-’