infusion of foreign capital through the Marshall Plan. It proved to be effective for rapid and strong recovery of the West German economy via guaranteed access to the huge US market during the Cold War, culminating inthe postwar economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder).
Ludwig
Erhard
Yet Erhard's program bore a close resemblance to the early economic strategy of the Third Reich. The maindifference was that while the Third Reich's program was one of economic nationalism, the Erhard program wassubservient to US geopolitical interests in the context of the Cold War. By relying on US capital and USmarkets, chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Erhard accepted the delay of German independence from USdomination for more than half a century. In contrast, Nazi economic policy aimed at the reconstruction of theGerman economy without the need for foreign capital, as a program for total and immediate nationalindependence.
Hitler's
economic
miracle
The Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, at a time when its economy was in total collapse, with ruinouswar-reparation obligations and zero prospects for foreign investment or credit. Yet through an independentmonetary policy of sovereign credit and a full-employment public-works program, the Third Reich was able toturn a bankrupt Germany, stripped of overseas colonies it could exploit, into the strongest economy in Europewithin four years, even before armament spending began. In fact, German economic recovery preceded andlater enabled German rearmament, in contrast to the US economy, where constitutional roadblocks placed by the US Supreme Court on the New Deal delayed economic recovery until US entry to World War II put the USmarket economy on a war footing. While this observation is not an endorsement for Nazi philosophy, theeffectiveness of German economic policy in this period, some of which had been started during the last phase of the Weimar Republic, is undeniable.There were major differences between the German situation in 1933 and that in 1945. Not having been abattlefield in World War I, Germany in 1933 was not physically in ruins, as it was in 1945. What lay in ruinswas its political and economic institutions. But in 1933, Germany not only did not have the benefit of theMarshall Plan, it was saddled with ruinous war reparations and an inoperative credit rating. What Germany had in 1933 was full sovereignty through which the Third Reich was able to adopt policies of economicnationalism to full effectiveness. In 1945, Germany was deprived of sovereign power and national policies had
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