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

by Adam Tooze

The promise Hitler made on the night of 30 January 1933 was to restore the economic fortunes of the German peasantry within four years and the RNS certainly made good on that pledge. According to figures calculated by Germany’s most authoritative economic research agency, total farm income, of which animal products accounted for more than 60 per cent, rose by almost 14 per cent in 1933–4 and by another 11.5 per cent in 1934–5. At the same time the burden of taxes and interest payments on agriculture fell significantly.73 When we allow for the general deflation in prices, increases in money incomes on this scale more than made up for the Depression. The situation would have been even better if it had not been for the bad weather and poor harvest in 1934. In its inability to satisfy any of the major constituencies in the Third Reich, the RNS became a victim of its own effort to extend control to every aspect of food production. The creation of the RNS undoubtedly gave the Nazi regime an unprecedented degree of control over a vital part of the economy. But by the same token it politicized a vast swathe of everyday life. The organizational influence of the RNS extended into every home in the land. For the peasantry,