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)