The Malthusian physiognomy of Nazi economics

Abstract

The Nazi economic recovery, achieved between 1933 and 1938, displayed striking features of brilliant economic overhauling of a capitalist machine that had been plagued by a prolonged crisis. The means employed to effect the recovery appear to follow a Malthusian exercise in the rehabilitation of the function of effective demand: the Nazis, prompted by expediency and necessity, took remedial action that was very much in consonance with the canons of classical political economy. The succinct analysis of such an exercise in the context of the strong governmental regimentation of the Third Reich may provide insight into the nature and future of the capitalist regime, in the light of the fact that its principles, business and philosophical, and its implications for the world at large, so far, have not shown a marked departure from the way in which they were understood by the spirit of the 1930s, in Germany, as well as abroad.