The Third Reich in Power by Evans Richard J

Author:Evans, Richard J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN group

SOCIAL PROMISE AND SOCIAL REALITY

I

That Strength Through Joy and associated programmes were a substitute for real economic improvements was a view that was widely shared, and had a good deal of basis in fact. Most statistical investigations are agreed that the economic situation of the mass of working-class wage-earners did not markedly improve between 1933 and 1939. Nominal hourly wages in 1933 were 97 per cent of what they had been in 1932, and they had still not recovered in 1939, by which time they had risen only by one percentage point, to 98.140 The German Institute for Business Research conceded on 24 February 1937 that rearmament had entailed ‘a large economic sacrifice for the German people’ even as it attempted to refute the claim that living standards had actually declined.141 Calculating real wages has always been a tricky business, more so in the Third Reich than in most economies. Price Commissioner Goerdeler took the business of keeping consumer prices low very seriously; but even the Reich Economics Ministry admitted in 1935 that official statistics underestimated price rises, not to mention rents and other factors. Recent estimates have put average industrial real wages below their levels for 1928 (admittedly a particularly good year) until 1937, rising to 108 per cent in 1939; in practice, however, this meant that many workers in the consumer goods industries continued to earn less than they had done before the Depression; only those in arms and arms-related industries earned substantially more.142 Moreover, shortages of many kinds also entered the equation, along with the declining quality of many goods in consequence of the growing use of substitutes for basic raw materials like leather, rubber and cotton. Per capita consumption of many basic foodstuffs actually declined in the mid-1930s. In addition, wage increases were achieved above all by longer hours. In July 1934, Trustees of Labour were given the right to increase working time to more than the legal norm of eight hours a day and, particularly in arms-related industries, they used it. In machine engineering, for example, average weekly hours, after falling during the Depression from 49 in 1929 to 43 in 1933, rose to over 50 in the first half of 1939.143 Despite this, however, wages as a percentage of national income fell by 11 per cent between 1932 and 1938. Inequality actually increased between 1928, when the top 10 per cent of earners took 37 per cent of total national income, and 1936, when they took 39 per cent.144 The numerous deductions made from pay packets, for Strength Through Joy, Labour Front membership and the like, not to mention the endless collections held on the streets, in effect reduced income still further, in some cases by as much as 30 per cent. Under such circumstances, it was not surprising that by 1937-8 workers were having to put in longer hours just to maintain their existing, very modest standard of living.145

Overtime, generally paid at time and a quarter, was the only realistic way of increasing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.