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The Wages of Destruction: Difference between revisions
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* [[Social Darwinism]]: Hitler utterly believed in this in regards to economics. Tooze sums it up rather nicely with:
{{quote|'''''As we have seen, the doctrine of economic life as a field of struggle was already fully formed in Mein Kampf and Hitler’s ‘Second Book’. And this Darwinian outlook was only encouraged by the subsequent Depression. Given the density of Germany’s population and Hitler’s insistence on the inevitability of conflict arising from export-led growth, the conquest of new Lebensraum was certainly one means of raising Germany’s per capita income level. Hitler could hardly have been more emphatic or consistent in his advocacy of this position. As we have seen, he made a point of reiterating this belief in the very first days of his new government in 1933. An aggressive foreign policy based on military strength was the only real foundation of economic prosperity.'''''}}
** To manage the rations for prisoners forced to do work, the Nazis relied on a very brutal program based on this trope that became their nationwide practice throughout the Reich:
{{quote|'''''Bonuses of various kinds were widely used by German employers. But Guenther Falkenhahn, the Generaldirektor of the Plessschen Werke, a mine that supplied IG Farben’s Silesian chemicals complex, took bonuses to a new, existential level. Under a system he dubbed Leistungsernaehrung, or ‘performance feeding’, he divided his Ostarbeiter into three classes. Only those achieving an adequate, average performance would receive the normal ration. Those underperforming would have deductions made from their rations. These deductions would then serve as bonuses for the above-average performers. The system was designed to manage scarcity. It implied no overall increase in the food ration. It simply rewarded the strong at the expense of the weak.'''''}}
* [[Stealing From the Till]]: The Nazi regime found a quasi-legal way to do so from their own citizens for most of the war. By freezing the civilian sector goods production while uncapping the wartime production caps, they encouraged people with cash that they could not spend to place it back in the banks and savings loans financed by the Reich itself. This kept the wartime production account pretty far into the black by using the excess funding consumers could not spend as their own personal slush fund.
* [[Too Clever by Half]]: Not long after Hitler took power, he sought to remove the economic shackles that bound Germany to the American and European markets. It succeeded, which was essential to preventing what he considered an economic straitjacket that would otherwise apply later on where those parties could squeeze Germany dry. However, it succeeded a bit too well, as it made Germany an outlaw nation in terms of financial credit, cutting off several sources of funding that otherwise could have bolstered the economy later, and still left late 1930's Germany in an economically regressed state in the long-term despite outwards signs of growth. The second item would be a chicken come home to roost later in the WWII period as Germany found itself even more destitute than it was after WWI.
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