Significantly, the will to achieve social reform was strongest among those leaders within the Nazi Party who were also the most actively involved in pushing forward the agenda of ethnic genocide. The idea of a huge pension increase in 1944 was budgetary insanity. Yet some within the Nazi hierarchy supported it for the ‘psychological dividends it would pay among our working ethnic comrades [Volksgenossen].’ They called for ‘blue- and white-collar workers to be put on equal footing’ to give them a preliminary taste of the harmonious future to come, which would be achieved through a ‘generous reform of the social welfare state in the interest of working people.’
German journalist, historian and social scientist
Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.
[A]1942 levy required property owners to pay ten years of the tax in advanced in a single lump sum. Because property owners were prohibited from raising rents, they alone bore the burden. In addition, the Reich appropriated other revenues that had previously belonged to local authorities.All told the state collected the considerable sum of 8.1 billion reichsmarks (in today’s currency the equivalent of around 100 billion dollars) in additional revenues in 1942-43. The financial newspaper Bankwirtschaft hailed the windfall as ‘a satisfactory result in terms of both limiting consumer spending power and improving the state budget.
Such material benefits suggest how the regime maintained its popularity during the war. Indeed, concern for the people’s welfare—at any cost—was a mark of the Nazi system from its inception. Between 1933 and 1935, the leadership owed its domestic support to its efficient campaign against unemployment. However, the regime succeeded in combating joblessness only by incurring a fiscally irresponsible level of state debt. Later the regime would require a not particularly popular war to keep government finances afloat.
[The Nazis] handed out billions in price subsidies to farmers…. As early as December 1939, a high-ranking financial administrator complained that the privileging of farmers ‘is in many case so grotesque that it can scarcely be kept secret from the rest of the populace, segments of which are being called on to make real sacrifices.’