How successful was Hitlers economic policy?

Hitlers economic policy was a very important part of the Nazi regime, especially when considering
the economic state that Germany was in at the time. There were three main parts to Hitlers
economic policy, the recovery (under Schacht) the Four-Year Plan (under Goring) and the German
economy at war.
Schachts economic strategy used many different techniques to try and help the economy recover
and was mostly very successful. For example, Schacht gave financial benefits to small groups such as
farmers and small businesses. However, his most significant action toward the economy was state
investment in public works. Schacht expanded the RAD to employ 19-25 year olds and also invested
heavily in the development of the vehicle industry. He also increased spending on housing and
public buildings. This helped to dramatically increase public spending, helping to improve the
economy. This also led to a striking decrease in unemployment. It could be considered that Schachts
successes were aided by the general improvement in the world economy, but it is unlikely that an
improvement so successful in such a rapid amount of time could be completely down to this,
meaning Schachts economic policy seems to have been very successful. Schacht also had one other
major point in his plan, the New Plan. This employed many clever economic techniques such as Mefo
bills which were special credit notes issued by the government to pay for goods with interest per
year. Aside from being a clever way to generate spending, they also disguised government spending.
Overall it can be seen that Schachts economic policy was very successful as it achieved its aims of
helping the economy recover in Germany by reducing unemployment and increasing production,
while controlling the deficit so as not to reintroduce inflation
Another part of Hitlers economic policy was the Four-Year Plan under Goring. This had many aims,
but the overall aim was to make Germany self-sufficient. For example, the plan aimed to increase
production of raw materials such as coal and steel to reduce Germanys dependence on other
countries. The plan did manage to expand the production of some key materials, such as explosives
and aluminium but it failed to reach targets in key materials such as rubber and oil. However, due to
Germany entering the war in 1939, the Four Year Plan did not ever actually run for the whole 4 years
undistracted. However, it must be remembered that by 1939 the economy, despite its underlying
flaws, was still built up on more of a foundation of war that Britain or France. Overall, it is therefore
clear that the Germany economy and the Four Year Plan under Goring were reasonably successful,
but there were many flaws, and Germany never actually achieved its aim of autarky. However, the
extent that this could be blamed on the start of the war is considerable.






The 3
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phase of the Nazi economy was the economy at war. The economy during the war had the
main aims of making sure that Germany was completely financially geared for war, that it could
sustain itself while the war was being fought, and be able to recover rapidly after the war had
finished. These aims were never really achieved. Despite the work done in the Four-Year Plan, the
Army had not grown as rapidly as had been hoped. For example, Germanys air force only increased
slightly, while Britains air force trebled in the same amount of time. This could be due to the lack of
central control of the economy, with many small ministries working to achieve their own aims which
usually ended up at odds with each other. However, this was resolved by the Rationalisation decree
and the appointment of Albert Speer as minister of economics. Speer used many techniques to
properly engage the economy for the war. For example, Speer made sure more women were
employed in arms factories, using concentration camp prisoners as labourers and preventing skilled
workers being conscripted to the Army. Using these methods, Speer managed to massively increase
production of ammunitions and tanks in his first 6 months in power. However, even with this sharp
increase in production, Germany was failing to compete with the allies in armaments production.
Speer also failed to properly use the resources claimed from conquered territories, which also could
have given Germany a significant economic advantage. Overall, it could be argued that Germanys
economy at war and under Speer was successful in the sense that production did increase, but its
successes were massively limited by its general inefficiency and inability to compete with the
production of the allies, something which is key to a country at war.
In conclusion, it can be said that Hitlers economic policy was overall unsuccessful. The economy,
despite recovering from the bad economic climate in the early 1930s, was never able to fulfil the
demands Hitler laid out and never met the majority of its production aims, even when the economy
was pushed hard to achieve its aims by Speer. However, it must also be considered that the
economic policy, despite being Nazi policy, was never Hitlers policy at all. The policies followed from
1933 by Schacht, Goring and Speer all seemed to come directly from these men themselves, only
really following Hitlers desires without formal instruction from Hitler on how to achieve the aims.
Therefore it could be argued that it was not Hitlers economic policy that was unsuccessful. It could
be said that the individual failures can be blamed on Schacht, Goring and Speer and the individual
policies they created, as Hitler seems to not have had much part in deciding how the economy was
run from 1933-1945.