The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

by Adam Tooze

The majority of the moneys was reserved for local infrastructure work of various kinds. However, between 1933 and 1934 a steadily rising amount, finally to reach 230 million Reichmarks, was siphoned off for ‘special measures’ at the discretion of the Reich’s authorities. ‘Special measures’ was a euphemism for military infrastructure–strategic roads, airfields, barracks and waterways.24 In the work creation mythology of the Nazi regime, the autobahns occupy a special place.25 Ironically, however, the autobahns were never principally conceived as work creation measures and they did not contribute materially to the relief of unemployment.26 They followed a logic, not of work creation, but of national reconstruction and rearmament, a logic indeed that was as much symbolic as it was practical.