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Comment by a_bonobo | Hacker News Reader

The NSDAP-style alignments went both ways: if the industry bigwig joined the party, he got access to lucrative contracts and insider information. The NSDAP also helped strike down strikes for the bigwigs, and later, supplied slaves from concentration camps for cheap. In turn, the party got to deeply control the bigwig: don't toe the party line and you're either out, or you're in danger. Join the party and publicly demonstrate your allegiance to the leadership.

See the secret industry meeting from 1933 as the prime example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Meeting_of_20_February_...

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It was a very mafia-like arrangement. Loyalty meant being rewarded with lucrative opportunities but it also meant you owed them and sooner or later they'd come back asking for one favour or another.

It's also objectively the definition of fascism; a society where industry and party is working together as one body with the strong leader as the head.

Nazis were very good at making both industrialists and military feel rich. The German stock market went up like a rocket between 1933 and 1941.

And the military higher-ups were bribed with constant personalized handouts. Hitler even paid a wealthy general’s entire divorce settlement from taxpayer funds, as mentioned here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery_of_senior_Wehrmacht_of...

” Such was the success of Hitler's bribery system that by 1942, many officers had come to expect the bestowing of "gifts" from Hitler and were unwilling to bite the hand that fed them so generously.[10] When Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was sacked by Hitler in December 1941, his first reaction was to contact Hitler's aide Rudolf Schmundt to ask if his sacking meant that he was no longer to receive bribes from the Konto 5 ("bank account 5") slush fund.”

With the level of corruption in the current US administration, it seems entirely possible that it’s heading in a similar direction. For example, why shouldn’t Trump award a billion units of his crypto coin to loyal military leaders? What law prohibits that and who enforces it?

Do you have any idea how the investors in the German stock market in that period made out after the war? I'm guessing that they probably lost a lot, especially in East Germany, but I'm interested in reading more detailed accounts or investigations of the situation.

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