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Comment by Svip | Hacker News Reader

The first figure is a bit obfuscating. It says 1922-1939, but only shows 1926 through 1939. Which is probably a good thing, because then it doesn't include the hyperinflation of the early 1920s, which might undermine the point of 'Nazis stabilising the economy'.

By 1933, most Western economies were moving out of the Great Depression, even if the Netherlands - only economy compared here (wouldn't the UK or France be more interesting comparisons?) - was a bit slow. Further, the economic boom of 1933 is probably due to the government prior to Hitler's enacted several large scale projects, like the Autobahn, to help boost the economy.

I'm not saying Schacht wasn't brilliant at managing German finances under severe limitations for rearmament, but the article seems to hint it was basically Schacht alone that ensured the economic boom of 1933-39 in Germany.

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> (wouldn't the UK or France be more interesting comparisons?)

France wasn't affected much by the Great Depression because it had an economy centralised around the colonies, it affected a lot Germany but in France not that much.

No, the reason why was France pegging to gold at a very favourable rate in the 1920s. The UK, obviously, was not short of colonies but got absolutely rolled in this period because they pegged to gold at their old rate instead of devaluing. This led to huge unemployment issues (even before the GD). Germany suffered because they were heavily reliant on flows of US capital causing bank failures (there was a tremendous boom between 25-29).

The economic effect of the Autobahn is massively overstated (I would actually look to Wages of Destruction by Tooze here). Public works were important but it is as important to look at how this was all facilitated.

The reason it only shows 26-39 is that Nazis came to power in 1932. The worst year in the GD was 1931-32, other countries were not moving out by 1933, most didn't move out decisively until WW2. The UK isn't a good comparison (the UK was still way ahead of most other nations at this point, Germany wasn't particularly similar).

It is definitely possible that without Schacht, the boom wouldn't have occurred. The constraints on resources were massive and required the invention of a range of complex economic devices to manage. Even at the time, there was the same backwards thinking about this: Germany must have managed to do this because they had the resources. No, they had no resources. What they did was very unusual. The only comparison that occurs is the international monetary co-operation in the 1960s to maintain the $ peg to gold...and even then, the level of sophistication required was nowhere near and the results achieved far less significant.

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