I. ECONOMIC MOBILIZATION FOR WAR
The significance of the economic measures adopted and applied by the conspirators can be properly appraised only if they are placed in the larger social and political context of Nazi Germany. These economic measures were adopted while the conspirators were directing their vast propaganda apparatus to the glorification of war. They were adopted while the conspirators were perverting physical training into training for war. They were adopted while these conspirators were threatening to use force and were planning to use force to achieve their material and political objects. In short, these measures constitute in the field of economics and government administration the same preparation for aggressive war which dominated every aspect of the Nazi state.
In 1939 and 1940, after the Nazi aggression upon Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France, it became clear to the world that the Nazi conspirators had created probably the greatest instrument of aggression in history. That machine was built up almost in its entirety in a period of less than one decade. In May of 1939 Major General George Thomas, former Chief of the Military-Economic Staff in the Reich War Ministry, reported that the German Army had grown from seven Infantry divisions in 1933 to thirty-nine Infantry divisions, among them four fully motorized and three mountain divisions; eighteen Corps Headquarters; five Panzer divisions; twenty-two machine gun battalions. Moreover, General Thomas stated that the German Navy had greatly expanded by the launching, among other vessels, of two battleships of thirty-five thousand tons, four heavy cruisers of ten thousand tons, and other warships; further, that the Luftwaffe had grown to a point where it had a strength of two hundred sixty thousand men, twenty-one squadrons, consisting of two hundred forty echelons, and thirty-three Anti-Aircraft Batteries. (EC-28) General Thomas further reported, in a lecture delivered on 24 May 1939 in the Nazi Foreign Office, that out of the few factories permitted by the Versailles Treaty there had arisen * * *
“The mightiest armament industry now existing in the world. It has attained the performances which in part equal the German wartime performances and in part even surpasses them. Germany’s crude steel production is today the largest in the world after the Americans. The aluminum production exceeds that of America and of the other countries of the world very considerably. The output of our rifle, machine gun, and artillery factories is at present larger than that of any other state.” (EC-28)
These results—about which General Thomas spoke in his book entitled Basic Facts for a History of German War and Armaments Economy—were achieved only by making preparation for war the dominating objective of German economy. As General Thomas stated on page 479 of his book:
“History will know only a few examples of cases where a country has directed, even in peace time, all its economic forces deliberately and systematically towards the requirements of war, as Germany was compelled to do in the period between the two World Wars.” (2353-PS)
The task of mobilizing the German economy for aggressive war began promptly after the Nazi conspirators’ seizure of power. It was entrusted principally to Schacht, Goering, and Funk.
Schacht was appointed President of the Reichsbank in March 1933, and Minister of Economics in August 1934. The world did not know, however, that the responsibility for the execution of this program was entrusted to the office of the Four Year Plan under Goering (EC-408). Nor did the world know that Schacht was designated Plenipotentiary for the War Economy on 21 May 1935, with complete control over the German civilian economy for war production in the Reich Defense Council, established by a top secret Hitler decree.
A letter dated 24 June 1935, at Berlin, and signed by von Blomberg, reads in part:
“* * * The Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor has nominated the President of the directorate of the Reichsbank, Dr. Schacht, to be Plenipotentiary-General for War Economy. * * *