Bernd 07/12/2019 (Fri) 02:10:43 No.27967 del
Unemployment
You know the story. It’s 1933 and the new Chancellor has on his hands a ruined nation with millions unemployed. Through work creation drives and other Keynesian stimuli he builds autobahns and reduces unemployment to almost zero in a handful of years without the rise of inflation. What happened?

First, it’s important to know the peak of the crisis had already been overcome. The highest level of unemployment, exceeding 6 million, was in winter 1931/32. The following winter already had a lower figure. Observers were optimistic about the future. There would have been some recovery even if policies remained exactly as they were.
Under a number of different policies and governments, too, there would have been recovery, perhaps better than what was achieved. But that is speculative.
GDP statistics show private investment boomed in 1933 but was offset by a decline in private consumption (wages stagnated and prices rose), so the public sector did carry the recovery.

Work creation wasn’t a central pillar of NSDAP policy. It was brought to power by the farmer’s lobby (an important force with its own chapter), the military and some leaders in the nationalist right. Its priorities were protecting the rural population, rejecting the impositions of Versailles and, most importantly, rearmament. Its Strasserist wing did care about work creation but for the mainstream that topic was on the table only around 1932-1934.