The Road to Recovery (3) Gerhard [ Part 1 ] [ Part 2 ] ~~~~ | Historical Studies Institute

The Road to Recovery (3)
Gerhard

[ Part 1 ]
[ Part 2 ]
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The Landhilfe permitted foreigners living in Germany, primarily Poles, to enter the program. Hitler had a particular interest in preserving Germany’s farming stratum. During World War I, his country had suffered acutely from Britain’s naval blockade of food imports. He considered a thriving agrarian economy vital to making Germany self-sufficient in this realm. By reducing the effectiveness of a potential nautical blockade in the event of future hostilities, growers indirectly contributed to national defense. On the ideological plain, Hitler regarded a robust agrarian class to be essential for a healthy general population. In the turbulence of the modern age, industrialization and progress removed man further and further from his natural surroundings. Bound to the soil and the family homestead for generations, the farming community was an anchor rooted in traditional German customs and values. It drew sustenance from the land and passed it on to the nation. While labor represented a dynamic political force, the farming stratum remained the “cornerstone of ethnic life.(1)

The Führer esteemed such self-reliant, rugged people as an indispensable mainstay for the nation. Addressing half a million farm folk in Bückeberg in October 1933, he stated, “In the same measure that liberalism and democratic Marxism disregard the farmer, the National Socialist revolution acknowledges him as the soundest pillar of the present, as the sole guarantee for the future.(2) Hitler not only maintained Germany’s agrarian class but augmented it; housing planners sited many new settlements of single family homes in rural areas where residents took up farming. The government provided interest-free loans and grants for the purchase of farm implements along with special marriage loans for newlyweds. The debts were to be forgiven after the family had worked the farm ten years.(3)

Germany’s economic reforms would never have been so successful without overhauling the tax structure. In the Weimar Republic, state and local governments had raised revenue for operating expenses, reparations payments to the Entente, and public aid through steadily increasing taxation. The drain on working families' budgets had reduced purchasing power, restricted the demand for consumer goods, decreased production and caused lay-offs. As more people lost jobs, unemployment pay-outs were augmented, placing greater demands on those still in the work force. Municipalities collected taxes and fees according to local needs without a nationally coordinated revenue system. Costly, inefficient, and overlapping bureaucracies burdened citizen and economy alike.

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References :

[1] Zitelmann, Rainer, Hitler Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionär, p. 204

[2] Ibid, pp. 204-205

[3] Reinhardt, Fritz, Die Beseitigung der Arbeitslosigkeit im Dritten Reich, p. 91


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