Here comes # 8 in a series of ten ZGrams describing how Hitler's program was perceived across the Channel. This segment deals with what is probably best known - how Hitler created work for the "six million unemployed":
"We hold it to be the prime duty of the State to see that the citizens can secure means of livelihood."
Here, once more, we have one of the most important statements of Party undertakings. Hitler has held it of primary importance to combat unemployment by every permissible means advisable by ingenuity and ardent purpose.
This nation-wide struggle postulates immense governmental preparations. It is not one to be tackled piecemeal and by temporary measures. The whole reconstruction is to be built up after Hitler's own scheme and recommendations, schemes which embrace every sphere of industry, of private and public life. Not a struggle merely, but indeed, a mighty campaign against unemployment has been launched in Germany. It is hoped at last to obtain the victory over decades-long misery and ever-recurring industrial crises. Every man in the country must bear his part in this gigantic enterprise. The victory means nothing less than a stable recovery of industry. A strong State is the guarantor of steady business. Every possible means has been co-ordinated to this end.
The State has provided the sinews of war for this struggle, but the German people themselves have also subscribed many millions of marks for the promotion of national industry. in 1933 the government set aside 4.3 milliards, in 1934 about 5 milliards to finance schemes of work for the unemployed.
Vast plans were put in hand for the making of canals, for the building of power plants. Nearly all the greater rivers of Germany were harnessed to some productive purpose. By the expenditure of one hundred million marks, one million workmen could be kept employed for an entire month. The work on the Weser, and on the Dortmund-Ens Canal will keep twenty thousand men in work for four years. Another gigantic canal, begun in 1933 will provide work for 1,510,000 days. In the same district between Hannover and Magdeburg one hundred and ten square miles will be brought into cultivation which have hitherto been mere waste or swamp.
In order to secure more land for husbandry in Schleswig-Holstein, two great dams are to be constructed across the Eider River. The work will last three years. Thousands will thereby support themselves, and a plain of 225 square miles will be reclaimed. The enterprise can well be compared with that of Signor Mussolini on the Pontine Marshes.
The German Government offers to meet 40 per cent of the cost to everyone who builds a house or who proposes to carry out reparations and improvements. The result of this step is scarcely to be believed. The building trade, hitherto at a very low ebb, has looked up and gone ahead surprisingly. And consequently so have all the allied industries. Factories are at work day and night. In the spring of 1934 in many large German cities not a single skilled man in the building trade was out of work. This flourishing state of affairs repercussed on the machine industry and gave work to again another ten thousand men.
Hitler, himself an ardent mechanic, has found the way for a vast revival in the motor-car industry by reducing the tax. The number of cars on the road doubled in 1933. One can judge of the cheerful position of affairs in this direction from the assurances made by motor-car manufacturers that they are in a position to deliver the goods at once.
The most important attack on unemployment, however, was delivered when the building of immense new arterial roads was planned on the direct initiative of the Chancellor. This constitutes the biggest thing ever done in this direction. From four to five thousand miles of auto-roads are projected to be built in six directions right across the country. Two will run from north to south, one from Kiel via Hamburg, Bremen, the Schwarzwald to Basel, the other from East Prussia via Berlin and Munich to the Alps. Three of these great roads will run from east to west, one from Frankfurt-Oder, and the other from Breslau, to the Rheinland, and one from Saarbrücken to Salzburg. This last one is to be called the Nibelungen Road. The sixth of the whole series will run from Hamburg to Breslau. All these roads will be built on the most modern lines.
They will be practically all on one grade and in no way interrupted by crossings. Other roads will be carried over by bridges. The entire plan will require many years to carry out. The Government has earmarked over two milliards of marks a year towards it. Whole armies of men find employment on it. The project is a proud one, for it not only resembles the great engineering feats of the Romans, but promises to change the face of the entire country for coming generations.
These are the ideas of young leaders confided to the might and craft of young workers to carry out, all working together to reduce - and ultimately to extinguish - the hideous curse of unemployment in Germany.
Work Camps
The idea of the Work Camp (which was originally envisioned on volunteer lines, students alone being obliged to attend) also proposed fruitful means of combating unemployment. Over five thousand camps, mostly situated in the country, keep going three hundred thousand young people between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. Many of them put in no more than half a year of work-service, and are then free to take employment elsewhere. They go forth, furnished with certificates, often to places awaiting them. Very possibly this volunteer service will develop later into an obligation. Plans are already in course of construction whereby such an army of workers can be employed for twenty years. The produce so raised will value two milliards of marks a year, and at least five thousand new peasant homesteads will be created.
Naturally the work done in these camps is of a supplementary order and is not allowed to compete in the open market with work turned out under ordinary conditions outside. Nor is such work undertaken which could as well be performed by private enterprise. It is the aim and object of these camps to promote facilities for other people, i.e. by the reclamation or improvement of waste land upon which settlements can be founded. The making of new roads, of course, opened up new ground for such a purpose. The settlement building itself is never undertaken by camp workers. The latter confine themselves to forestry, projects of land reclamation from the sea, canals, irrigation and particularly all undertakings which have for their aim the prevention of catastrophic happenings, forest fires, burst dikes, floods and so forth.
All this has proved of great practical utility. The young people in the Work Camps are well trained in the use of their various tools and implements, spades, pikes, shovels, etc. and can be quickly mustered and detailed for a job. Once on the occasion of a huge landslide in the Saale (a river in Central Germany) a serious disaster was only averted by the immediate mobilisation of young navvies from the nearest Work Camp, who immediately set to work to set things to rights. Many a village has been saved from extinction by fire by the exertions of such organised workers, and immense consequent misery avoided.
The campers themselves are willing and devoted enough. Each man knows that his work benefits the community at large, and that he is therefore carrying out the fundamental principles of National Socialism. Hitler's worthy pronouncement, "There is only one nobility, the nobility of work" sustains these laborers through the heat and the toil of the longest day.
Life in a Labour Camp is not in the least modelled on the military plan. The workers rise at five in summer, and at six in winter. Half an hours exercise or sports precedes tubbing and breakfast. Then comes parade and the hoisting of the camp flag for the day. This resembles the Hooked Cross Flag - only instead of the Hooked Cross in the white circle it displays a spade and a couple of ears of wheat. The whole is symbolic and recalls Frederick the Great's fine saying: "He who toils to make two ears of wheat grow where there was only one before, does more for his country than a general who wins a redoubtable victory."
After this parade the workers betake themselves to their various employments; the volunteers down tools at the end of a seven-hours' spell. Then comes a wash, and the midday meal eaten, naturally, in common. The food is good, and everyone can have as much as he requires. An hour and a half's "knock-off" ensues. The afternoon is taken up by a couple of hours of sport, and an hour's instruction in civics. The evening is passed in singing songs, and in reading aloud etc. etc. Two or three evenings a week each man can call his own, up to ten o'clock. Tattoo is at ten: everyone must then be in quarters.
The Work Camp brings all classes together. The student is set just the same jobs as anyone else. The hope is that thirty years hence there will be no more intellectuals or officials in Germany who have not passed through the school of manual work side by side with the everyday workman.
(To be continued tomorrow)
=====
Thought for the Day:
"A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it."
(William Ralph Inge)
Back to Table of Contents of the Sept. 1999 ZGrams