Ben Wilson

And he really fiddles with the controls of this economy.

Now I am more of a free market person myself, but you have to admit that if central control can ever work.

only works for a short amount of time and you need a real genius at the controls and that's what you have at this time period you have shocked who is a unbelievable genius and uh and he is at the controls and he is able to to stabilize things with all these different tools and even so

It is starting to come apart at the seams after a few years, at which point they do start to like loosen up on some of the regulations.

Because even with a genius in charge, you know, you can only centrally plan an economy for so long, but it does work for a couple of years and really starts to pull Germany out of this deep economic quagmire.

Unemployment, which had stood at about 6 million when Hitler took office, began to fall almost immediately.

By 1936, it would be effectively eliminated.

So this is a really extraordinary achievement and Hitler was quick to claim credit for it.

And look, like setting aside everything else that happened, the economic turnaround of the early years of the Third Reich was real and it generated genuine popular support.

People were incredibly enthusiastic and supportive of the government after he essentially ends mass unemployment.

People who had been starving now had jobs.

People who had been hopeless had purpose.

You know, Hitler gives people hope once again that things can get better.

Now, even though the economy is getting back to working, that isn't the priority.

Rearmament was declared a priority from the very beginning.

Even the public works programs, the unemployment schemes, the economic recovery, all of it was consciously oriented toward rebuilding Germany's military capacity.

Hitler made this clear to the cabinet in February, barely two weeks after taking office.

And the military loved this.

It was the restoration of their prestige.

Great.