[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 rais… - Götz Aly

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.

Some within the Nazi hierarchy… 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 achieve through a ‘generous reform of the social-welfare state in the interest of working people.’

Not surprisingly, some of the first measures enacted after the Nazis came to power were aimed at alleviating the threat, felt by the majority of Germans in the wake of the Depression, of eviction and repossession. Several early Nazi laws restricted the right of creditors vis-à-vis debtors so as to prevent ‘the impoverishment of the [German] people.’ The 1938 Old Debt Eradication Law invalidated hundreds of thousands of titles to collectible debts. The Law for the Prevention of Misuse of Repossession, passed in 1934, was directed against what was seen as the ‘nearly unlimited freedom enjoyed by creditors’ in the past.