The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It

by Will Storr

months after taking office, they authorised the construction of a brand new, ultra-modern form of road, the motorway, with Hitler personally signing off the design of bridges and service stations; by 1935, 125,000 men were working on them and by summer 1938, they’d built 3,500 kilometres; by the end of that year five billion marks had been spent on job-creation schemes; they gave out subsidies for house purchases, conversions and maintenance; spent substantial amounts in deprived areas; offered young engaged couples interest-free loans to help get them started (nearly a quarter of a million loans were issued in the first year alone); through their leisure organisation Strength Through Joy they bought and subsidised thousands of theatre tickets (accounting for more than half of all Berlin ticket sales in 1938); put on music concerts in factories; built theatres; organised exhibitions, operas and plays (in 1938, nearly seven and a half million went to its plays and six and a half million to its opera and operetta evenings); offered heavily discounted package holidays to locations such as Libya, Finland, Bulgaria and Istanbul, offering 75 per cent off rail tickets and 50 per cent off hotels (in 1937 alone, 1.7 million Germans went on a Strength Through Joy holiday whilst nearly seven million went on one of their weekend mini-breaks – accounting for as many as 11 per cent of overnight stays in all German hotels); they put on cruises (140,000 passengers in one year alone); thei...