LogFAQs > #882957213

Peterass posted...

Germany after WW1 was in extreme poverty, weak, and on the brink of collapse.

The only really painful years for Germany were 1921-23. Germany's economy recovered strongly after the hyperinflation of 1923 (the twelve-month growth rate after the Weimar Republic rebounded from its first serious recession over the winter of 1926–27 was higher than anything achieved under Hitler's Third Reich), and it was the Depression that later brought an end to what were called the Weimar economy's "gold-plated" years.

He made Germany powerful again and allowed the German people bounce back from harsh sanctions placed by the allies of WW1

Germany stopped making reparations repayments in 1931, well before Hitler came to power. By that time, she'd paid only around 21.5 billion marks -- while over the same period, she received 27 billion gold marks in net capital inflows, mainly from private investors. This, I'd point out, was less than half the cost that destruction during the war had inflicted on France; and a good deal of that destruction was down to Germany's spiteful 'scorched earth' policies in occupied France in 1917 and 1918.

In fact it could be argued that Germany actually paid between only 8 billion and 13 billion marks (i.e., 4-7% of total national income) over the lifetime of reparations, because after 1923 she used US loans to finance the payments -- and Germany defaulted on her US loans in the early 1930s, owing Uncle Sam the equivalent of roughly 8.4 billion marks in 1932.

The German economy under Hitler may look like it enjoyed a strong upturn when seen against the very low baseline of the Depression years of 1929–32, but it's a trick of the light. Nazi economic policy was definitely not a miracle formula. Most working-class German families under Hitler in the 1930s still existed on a very modest standard of living. In 1938, German families actually ate less wheat bread, meat and meat products, bacon, milk, eggs, fish, vegetables, sugar, and beer than they had in 1927. The only things they were eating more of – after five years of Nazi government – were rye bread, cheese and potatoes. (Source: The Nazi Economic Recovery, 1932–38 by Richard J. Overy, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1996.)

Meanwhile, German GDP per capita in the 1930s remained lower than that of the USA, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, The Netherlands, France, Denmark or Belgium. (Source: The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze, Penguin, 2006.)

Even by 1937, the economy was only just above the level reached some twenty-five years before, and from 1936 onward all the indices of growth began to slow down. The short-term recovery might have been achieved with remarkable speed, but the long-term prospects for growth were much more muted. Hitler was no miracle worker.
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