The road to hell is paved with (allegedly) good intentions.
Socialists of the national brand worship Hitler as a prophet. They don’t shy away from calling Germany’s post-Weimar economic recovery a “miracle” performed by an idealized version of an autistic demagogue puppet. They like to remind us of his allegedly good intentions and the few short-lived accomplishments of his administration; before it ran it all into the ground with its ludicrous decision-making. Praising your rapist for lubing you up before violating you is not sane behavior.
Hitler loved his people? Bullshit. You don’t love your people and then expose them to multiple fronts against vastly outnumbering foes. You don’t love your people and then send them off to die in trenches far away from the homeland they are supposed to protect, stretching them thin for their foes to easily steamroll. You don’t send all the men to die needlessly, leaving all the women, children, and elderly to be brutalized, raped, pillaged, literally enslaved, and psychologically tortured by the foes you provoked and invited in to annihilate you.
Was it a miracle?
The economic recovery of Germany after Hitler rose to power had nothing to do with a magical economic policy, nor anything that requires more than 85 IQ. Going from zero to mediocrity just because you boycott your debts and obligations under the unfair and inhumane Treaty of Versailles isn’t an accomplishment. Was East Germany’s economic “recovery” a miracle when it restarted after it was totally decimated by the socialist hordes? If you claim Hitler to be an economic magician, then, by the same “logic,” you must concede to the claim that East-German communism was also an economic “miracle.” Hint: neither instance was.
To put a brandade on a wound to stop the bleeding, and then watch the wound heal by itself doesn’t make you a magician. It’s common sense. In the case of an economy (any economy), if you remove the things that suppress it, the economy will grow - inevitably. Economies work spontaneously - the less you intervene, the more prosperous and the more peaceful they become.
Hitler did “free” the economy just enough for it to flourish, but not enough for it to be self-governed. Had it been a true free market, there would be no war industry; Germans and their rivals would have enjoyed win-win trade, with every incentive to stay peaceful, rather than seek profits in war.
War becomes profitable only under a centralized coercive government.
The only economics lesson you’ll ever need
When you love your country, and you are truly surrounded by foes, then you must avoid war, not prep for it.
The premise is that Germany had no choice since its foes (Poland, France, and Great Britain) were positioning themselves in threatening postures against Germany. The knee-jerk reaction is to go to war as if that’s the only choice. Bollocks!
Instead of wasting their massive productive potential on building instruments of war, Germans could have easily used the same manufacturing energy to “enslave” their foes with beneficiary trade deals.
The only way to guarantee peace is to make it more profitable than war.
When goods cross borders, soldiers don’t.
- Frédéric Bastiat
Violence, especially alleged preemptive violence, is the resort of the moron, and the bum who has no value offering. Germany’s insecure/aggressive stance in WW2 was not a defensive posture; it was supposedly a “preemptive” war by insane trigger-happy leaders who preferred the power lust of win-lose war over the humane achievement of win-win trade. They tried to “negotiate” peace using only military strength and power projections as their leverage. Alternatively, international trade between businesses without involving their atrocious governments would have been the only leverage they would need for peace. Imagine French and Polish businesses and consumers being so happy with the German value offering that they would resist their countries’ calls for war with Germany. The leaderships of said countries would have figured out (sooner or later) that trade was more profitable than war.
Isn’t that how militarily weak countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Switzerland, Bahrain, or Panama avoid being conquered by their militarily superior neighbors? It’s because these “weaker” countries have positioned themselves as valuable trade partners; so valuable that trading with them is more profitable than smashing them up and taking their business.
This is the ONLY responsibility of a country’s leadership: to make trade more profitable than war; to make itself more valuable to its rivals as a empowered trade partner than as a broken conquered enemy. And if it cannot avoid war, then it has failed miserably, and the people need to hold their “leaders” personally accountable.
When you are faced with people who threaten you, the best way to get them to stop threatening you is not to go to war with them. Why? Because even if you win, you lose in opportunity cost, and in the lives of your own people. The better alternative is to lock your rivals in a beneficial partnership with you where they have more to gain from trading with you than from enslaving you.
Yes, there are always irrational people who refuse to acknowledge their logical benefit, and whose best interest lies in your submission to them. Yes, those with the mental disease of pathological power lust would rather reign in hell than trade in heaven. But you can always go around them. If you can’t come to terms with a country’s leaders, then you could approach business owners and consumers. Approach their people. Give them special deals and advantages to benefit more from you being alive and well than from you being dead and broken. Even if Hitler’s administration did half-assedly try such a thing, it failed miserably due to its incompetence and eagerness to play at war. But most likely, it failed because its true aim from the start was the pillaging of Germany; to give to the Allies everything they regretted not taking with the Treaty of Versailles. (More on this in the next post).
Hitler does not deserve praise
Hitler was not smart. He was an easily provokable and predictable useful idiot, a patsy lured into a losing war. His war strategy was retarded. He went into the offensive on multiple fronts against vastly outnumbering foes. His supply lines were extremely stretched thin, and he clearly lacked the numbers and resources to occupy half of Europe, let alone the Soviet Union. Truly, the worst strategist in history, with no important victories other than the easy ones the Allies gave him to kickstart the war and make profits for the military industrial complex. Only an idiot would think that it would be that easy. But Hitler thought that.
Hitler’s Keynesian deficit-spending economic policy was further proof that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Deficit spending, fiat currency, and bullshit bonds are an economy’s heroin: they bring a short-lived high, followed by a deep inevitable crash. Let us not mention the blatant socialist policies of Hitler’s administration: welfare, public housing, public healthcare, centrally directed economy, and even “free” cars, all at the expense of Germany’s true economic potential.
Yes, Germany’s economy flourished as soon as Hitler was elected because he did what all Germans understood would bring economic prosperity: boycott the cruel Treaty of Versailles. Big deal. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that a country with the productive infrastructure of Germany at the time would boom once it stopped paying tribute to its post-WW1 conquerors.
Yes, Germany was temporarily freed from the banking cartel (supposedly…), but it still retained a national monopoly of fiat currency; still a violently enforced apparatus of government that had every incentive to go to war, since war becomes profitable only under statism. Sure, Germans enjoyed a few years of prosperity and freedom, but that was to prepare them for the horrors that would come. The more this artificial prosperity, the greater the ensuing nightmare. It’s always calmer before the storm.
There is nothing magical about “Hitler’s” economy, nothing clever about his economic policies. If anything, his socialist policies and centralization were still suppressing the German economy, which means the German economy would have been even greater without a totalitarian busybody regime.
Everybody claims economic miracles. Post-WW2 West Germany claimed it too, even though it was just the Marshall plan of debt on debt. East Germany claimed this “miracle” too; supposedly the faster economic growth in recorded history, even though it was just a completely decimated economy going from zero to one.
Epitaph
Hitler was socialist scum who destroyed his country by initiating war after being provoked - like a useful idiot patsy - to fall into dead-obvious traps by much better strategists than he ever was. German nationalists should hate Hitler more than anyone.
Pathetic
Adults idolizing anyone - especially sleazy politicians - is gay and pathetic. Only people without dignity or self-respect can idolize anyone. You can admire, but when someone can do no wrong in your eyes, and you get emotionally triggered when faced with criticism of him, then you’re in a cult. And people who have idolized Hitler are a mindless cult serving a propaganda psyop whose true origin they don’t even realize…
Idolizing a politician and/or historical figure is beta/gamma/omega behavior. It’s recognition of one’s own inferiority by comparison with his superior idol, which he himself elevates to such a high position. This arbitrary hierarchy is not earned by the appointed “alphas,” but rather, given to them by the needy, pathetic, and subservient sub-males who need to make up a pretend daddy, otherwise they don’t feel safe on their own.
Every time you see an adult male idolizing Hitler (or anyone for that matter), know you are dealing with a subservient sub-male, which deserves no respect. By “idolizing,” I mean elevating to a position where the idol can do no wrong, and is beyond criticism - any criticism causes emotional unrest in the idolizer. I can understand females idolizing someone portrayed as an alpha male. After all, it’s a woman’s job to secure an alpha for herself. But that’s a different topic.
To wrap it up
Granted, Germany did have legitimate grievances after WW1. Yes, boycotting the Treaty of Versailles was a good thing, because that Treaty was inhumane for the people of Germany - a treaty that was forced on them, which legalized their forced labor (slavery).
But that’s about it.
Hitler and his trigger-happy goons exposed their people to multiple fronts against vastly outnumbering enemies. They claimed to love their people, yet sent their men to be slaughtered in ditches, and their women to be raped by communist savages.
No, I don’t accept the justification that “they couldn’t negotiate.” This is bullshit. They could have used trade, and Germany’s superior productivity, to form trade relations with large foreign businesses; enough so that war with Germany would have become unprofitable for all.
The whole world was with Hitler up until 1939, and all that German military production could have been directed towards trade - easily. Instead, the military faggots wanted to prove themselves in war (from the safety of their bunkers), because they couldn’t shake the embarrassment of WW1. Where did that lead to? Germany is now a shadow of its former self, and it’s not going to survive the next couple of generations. Germany has died, and all because twitchy aggressive insecure military types with Napoleon syndrome wanted to send their people to die for some needy self-aggrandizing.
But that’s not all…
…To be continued in “Who was Hitler really serving?”
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I like the way you write and will continue to read your work with great interest.
However I found this article disappointing as I was expecting an actual economic analysis and details of why exactly Hitler's economy didn't work. You have instead however made some general statements and then filled the rest up with (creatively brilliant) word salad and a good deal of seemingly personal rancor towards Hitler as a politician and war leader in addition to the supposed thesis. Highly entertaining but I feel the title is a bit misleading, it's more an opinion piece on why Hitler failed as a leader in general.
As a side note, you may want to read more about how utterly petrified Germany (and Europe in general) were of Soviet Bolshevism and the fear it would spread. The Nazi's quite literally thought they were waging a war in defense of Europe and saving everyone. Absurd ot us now perhaps, but it's what they believed in the context of their time. And the weight that would give to the economic choices they made. In reply to your point about trade VS war, you may want to look into the world wide Jewish boycott of German goods starting in the 30's when they declared "total war" on Germany as a state. Interesting little tid bits there.
I think your thesis is spot on. I recently saw it called “The Capitalist Peace”.
The grotesque idea that sending men off to fight is somehow heroic is just another endemic aspect of altruism—sacrificing for the state; as opposed to fighting for one’s own values like individual liberty.
Having said that, I think your thesis shouldn’t be viewed as some utopian notion that armies should be dismantled. Game theory provides ample evidence that the tit for tat strategy demands that parties must be able to mirror their opponent’s move—either cooperation or defection.
“Of all the Western democracies, only two have no choice but to depend on their own military forces for their survival— the United States and Israel. The rest have for more than half a century had the luxury of depending on American military forces in general and the American nuclear deterrent in particular.”—Thomas Sowell