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

by Adam Tooze

The case for appeasement was powerfully reinforced by the fact that Hitler’s regime, after weathering the storm of indignation that followed the Rhineland Aktion in March 1936, seemed to be entering a phase of comparative ‘respectability’. In the summer of 1936, Germany hosted the athletes of the world at the Berlin Olympics, accompanied by a mob of international journalists. Goebbels bit his lip as the German press was instructed to give ample coverage to the triumphs of Jesse Owens and other African American athletes.7 In 1937, at the Paris world’s fair, the German pavilion was one of the star attractions.8 In its fifth year, Hitler’s regime could present itself as the model dictatorship. Unemployment had fallen to negligible levels. The economy was booming. Life for millions of German households was returning to something like normal.9 The savage wave of repression in 1933–4 had done its job. Inmate numbers in Himmler’s concentration camps dwindled to a few thousand. For a time, even the regime’s anti-Semitism was toned down. When compared to the warlike aggression of Fascist Italy in Africa and Imperial Japan in China, not to mention the well-publicized excesses of Stalin’s show trials, Hitler’s government appeared positively reasonable.