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

by Adam Tooze

there was virtually nothing, except the weather, that could not with some reason be blamed on the RNS and its intrusive regulation. Similarly, consumers found that their everyday tasks of shopping for food and even of preparing family meals were now the subject of political intervention and propagandistic comment. 74 In the final analysis, however, the difficulties faced by the RNS were not attributable to Darré’s ideological whimsy or the lumbering incompetence of his organization. The problems facing the RNS were effects of Germany’s struggle to manage its rapid economic recovery and its massive programme of industrial restructuring in the face of a binding balance of payments constraint. Since 1934, increases in industrial prices and wages had been held back in an attempt to prevent the industrial boom spilling over into inflation and a further deterioration n German competitiveness. This in turn meant that agricultural prices could not be substantially increased without hurting urban standards of living. At the same time the shortage of foreign exchange dramatically impeded progress in protein and fat production, by restricting the quantity and quality of feed available for the animal herd. All this meant that a gap between the consumer aspirations of Germany’s urban population and the productive capacities of German agriculture