Hitler's National Socialism by Rainer Zitelmann

Author:Rainer Zitelmann [Zitelmann, Rainer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Hitler, Zitelmann, National Socialism
Published: 2022-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

He then went on to declare that ‘already in his youth ...’ he had occupied himself ‘with the problem of capitalist monopoly companies’, to criticize the ‘unclean ... business methods of anonymous shareholders’, and sharply turned against the linking of political and economic interests.204

The following day (25 March 1942) Hitler again addressed himself to this topic. He emphasized that

... the Reich also has to keep its hand on monopolies, and thereby on monopoly profits [he meant the monopoly profits in the occupied Eastern territories – R.Z.]. For some incomprehensible reason, consideration has already been given to leaving the tobacco monopoly in the occupied Eastern territories to Herr Reemtsma [Philipp Reemtsma, a tobacco industrialist in Hamburg – R.Z.]; I have forbidden that out of hand and emphasized that, from the outset, the tobacco monopoly can only be given to the Reich itself. In the Reich itself, as I have long demanded, a monopoly tobacco industry has to come soon! For the same reason, over there [i.e. in the occupied Eastern territories – R.Z.] the greater part of the cultivated land has to remain state property as before, so that the profits from agricultural production in this gigantic state domain will be to the exclusive benefit of the state and can be used to cover the war debts. Quite apart from that, the required surplus of agricultural products is only produced by large estates anyway.205

These statements about the economic organization planned for the occupied territories in the East are particularly important for the following reason. As we shall show in the next chapter, the Lebensraum to be conquered in the East was for Hitler primarily also a source of raw material and a market and was not at all only intended for the settlement of farmers as research has assumed to date. This insight could, however, lead to the misconception that Hitler had waged the war against Russia for the purpose of imperialistic expansion in the service of capitalism. The opposite is true, because Hitler was, as the statements just cited above prove, in favour of the organization of the economy in the East being state-controlled from the beginning.

When on the one hand Hitler demanded the nationalization of large segments of German industry, on the other he still had reservations because of the over-centralization which would result. As we will show in Chapter VI.3.d, he was critical of any over-centralization. With this, however, he fell into the contradiction that both state control of the economy and the totalitarian political system he advocated had inherent centralistic tendencies.

With Hitler this contradiction expressed itself in a certain inconsistency when on 26 July 1942 he said in a table talk that the restructuring of the power industry should take place ‘neither in the form of socialism nor with a centralistic tendency’. He went on:

In the NS state the state administration intervenes quite naturally in the interests of every individual if this becomes necessary for the whole. Therefore the NS state can grant private initiative a much greater freedom, because the state reserves itself the right to intervene at any time.

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