Question

Explain why the nazis where able to reduce unemployment in Germany in the years 1933-1939.

Answer 1

Answer:

• Hitler’s first Economic Minster, Dr Hjalmar Schacht, expanded the public works schemes of the Weimar Republic and set up the National Labour Service (RAD).
• RAD used unemployed men between the ages of 18 and 25 to build government-funded motorways (known in German as Autobahnen), hospitals, schools and other public buildings such as the 1936 Olympic Stadium, and to work as groundskeeper

• The men spent six months in camps, wore uniforms and received a small amount of pay to send back to their families.
• RAD became compulsory for men in 1935. It was extended to women in 1939.

• To create as many jobs as possible, manual labour was favoured over the use of machines.

• RAD was beneficial to the Nazis because it provided them with cheap labour, reduced the numbers on the unemployment register, led to a network of motorways which could be used for the mobilisation of the army during the war and kept young people occupied.

Conscription

• From 1935 onwards, young men between the ages of 18 and 25 were conscripted into the army for two years. The army increased from 0.4 million in 1935 to 1.4 million in 1939.

REARMAMENT

• Rearmament was responsible for the bulk of economic growth between 1933 and 1938.
• Millions of jobs were created in factories producing new weapons. It started almost as soon as Hitler came to power, but was only announced publicly in 1935. 46 billion marks were spent on it.