Hitler and others promised that as soon as the National Socialist revolution had removed Jewry, economic exploitation would be overcome and a sociall… - Götz Aly

[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.’

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.’

By 1939 the national debt had reached 37.4 billion marks. The reemployment of millions of jobless and the rearmament of German military forces had been financed by borrowing gigantic sums of money. Even Goebbels, who otherwise mocked the government’s financial experts as narrow-minded misers, expressed concern in his diary about the exploding deficit.