“At least he made the trains run on time”
According to Glenview State Bank, despite all his faults, Hitler was really good on the economic front :
- Glenview State Bank executives apologized to Jewish people on the bank’s Web site Tuesday night, after a bank newsletter to customers praised Adolf Hitler as an economic leader of the 1930s.
. . .
The apology came after the Chicago chapter of the Anti-Defamation League started getting complaints about the bank’s July newsletter and the bank president’s depiction of Hitler as an economic leader–arguments that the author, who is the bank president, compared to the performance of today’s U.S. economy.
. . .
Anti-Defamation League regional director Richard Hirschhaut said he requested the apology during a conversation he had Tuesday with the bank’s main owners, which include bank holding company Chairman and Chief Executive John Jones and bank President Raub.“Hitler’s economic policies cannot be divorced from his great policies of virulent anti-Semitism, racism and genocide,” Hirschhaut wrote in a letter to the bank. “There are really no circumstances under which Hitler should be held as a good model.”
In the 1,500-word newsletter, Raub talks of how Hitler was the only major leader during the 1930s who successfully resuscitated his country’s economy when others such as President Franklin Roosevelt could not, and “led German workers to work harder than anyone else in Europe.”
. . .
Raub said Hitler avoided deflation unlike other European nations and reduced unemployment.This year, our economy has been beaten up by war, sluggish auto sales and stagnant business spending, Raub said. Yet consumers keep spending money, and the stock market has gone up, a sign that confidence is up in America.
. . .
The point of the newsletter? Glenview’s investment managers are confident, “and that’s why we’re buying and holding our favorite long-term growth stocks,” the newsletter ends.
I wonder if last year’s newsletter said something like “During Jefferson Davis’s tenure, the unemployment rate among African-Americans was at it’s lowest level in history.”
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What’s worse, the letter betrays a fundamental, if not idiotic misunderstanding of what actually happened in Nazi Germany. Now, I’m no expert, but I think a few things should be mentioned, and taken as they usually are for a fact:
1) There was a concentrated effort to disenfranchise a huge portion of Germany’s workforce (I’m talking about the Jews, naturally). Keeping them out of the workforce, and forcing them into ghettos where they essentially had to fend for themselves naturally created “opportunities” for pure white Aryan workers.
2) Hitler achieved his “miraculous” superiority to the US economy by
A) rearming the country, essentially creating a military economy in peacetime. This sort of spending always creates a temporary boost to the economy because people were out of work, but really does little to increase creativity, innovation, or economic agility. in fact, these sorts of economies are hamstrung by the fact the military cultures tend to crush human freedoms.
B) Essentially nationalizing Germany’s industry, and then making all of Germany’s non Jewish capitalists higher-ups in the Nazi party, allowing them to keep their factories and wealth while essentially working for only one customer, the German Government. Of course, the fact the entrepreneurship actually declined staggeringly, more so than in the US should come as no surprise.
C) By ruthlessly suppressing labor organization, freedom of travel, and of course, freezing all wages so that companies didn’t have to worry about the expense of paying for any sort of deflation.
3) The point is that, essentially, Nazi Germany was a communistic corporate state, if that can be believed. So while the US had a painfully slow but generally steady rise in GDP, income, etc during the worst of the 1930s, what happened in the US was actually based on more sound economic and democratic principles.
4) And, let’s not forget that in the US, the economy was hamstrung by a corporate elite that not only openly supported Hitler’s evil bullshit, but also refused to cooperate with FDR least stringent reforms. Not to mention pesky “democratic values” got in the Way of FDR actually seizing control of the businesses of the US and then appointing Ford, Getty, et al as the new ministers of the state.
Anyway, the entire world suffered during the 1930’s, and the fact that Germany created the facade of success by basically cheating should never be taken as any sort of Role model. It sounds like the owner of that bank is just another business asshole who was looking for a way to snidely insult liberal critics of GW, and he forgot himself a bit too much. Either that or he’s just a closet fascist. Either way, he’s dead wrong.
PS: I’m sorry I have not provided any sources, but I have tons of books and I’d be happy to mention them if anyone wants to read more.
Comment by Ross Angeles — July 31, 2003 @ 2:57 pm
Also, as an Oklahoman, I’d like to take a minute to address the following particularly galling paragraph:
“In the 1,500-word newsletter, Raub talks of how Hitler was the only major leader during the 1930s who successfully resuscitated his country’s economy when others such as President Franklin Roosevelt could not, and ‘led German workers to work harder than anyone else in Europe.’”
Dammit, first of all, Germany was about 1/5 the size of the US when Hitler took power, meaning that he had a much more wieldy economy to rape and plunder.
Second, this fu-, I’m sorry, this guy Raub’s assertion that German workers were more “hardworking” than other workers makes me so angry that normal, regular style Ross swearing just won’t do to articulate how I’m feeling.
You’ll notice how he says “European” workers, without including Americans. Now this is bullshit on so many levels. First of all because in the rest of the letter he’s comparing Germany to ALL of the industrialized economies of the world, including the US. Clearly he knows that if he mentions Americans in the comparison he can be easily disproved, and also, he’ll insult every single on of his customers. It’s also dishonest because he offers no evidence to support what he’s saying. There simply is no evidence to suggest that somehow British, French, or Italian workers were lazy ne’er do wells while Germans were hard working people who deserved what they got.
Furthermore, I don’t know what Raub’s family went through during the Depression, by my grandparents and cousins worked their asses off, and many of them traveled from Oklahoma to California in fucking wagons, risking death and abuse to find jobs, any jobs they could. I don’t think any of them could be accused of not being hard working, and I resent the implication that any workers, faced withy death because rich assholes fucked their economy up, are somehow lazy.
Finally, and this is the most important thing. Raub is subtly suggesting that economic problems can be laid at the feet of lazy workers - by his logic, Hitler didn’t manipulate das Volk and force them upon pain of death to devote their entire existence to the preservation of the Aryan Fatherland, he was simply a skillful administrator who had a really good knack for spurring the economy. You know, like Reagan but with more Jewess raping. I love how right wingers can’t wait to show how the recession is never the fault of the people who have all the money, it’s the fault of dirty unwashed poor people who aren’t sufficiently grateful for whatever scraps we give them. I also love how this letter basically functions as an open love letter to Dubya, and seems to me to contain some terrifying advice for our unelected Boy Wonder.
Comment by Ross Lincoln — July 31, 2003 @ 3:15 pm