They amounted in effect to a compulsory low-interest loan to the Reich, which by October 1939 had already risen to a total of 4.831 billion Reichsmarks.44 The idea behind the New Finance Plan was that if the Reich’s demand for credit could be met by paying its contractors in tax certificates, then the capital markets would be able to provide at least 1 billion Reichsmarks in loans to serve the needs of the Four Year Plan. From the outset, however, this emergency measure did little to hide the regime’s financial embarrassment.45 Technical expedients could not remedy the underlying problem of
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