THE MID-GERMAN HILLS (5) The mid-German hills are mainly dissected plateaux of Palaeozoic rocks the history of which includes their folding into a mountain system in the Permo-Carboniferous phase, their planing down by long denudation and their uplifting as blocks in Tertiary times. In the western half the Palaeozoic rocks outcrop almost everywhere, but the eastern half, east of the Rhine basin, is largely floored by Triassic rock with blocks of Palaeozoics brought up by faulting to form the Thuringer Wald and the isolated Harz mountains in the north. In the western half the plateau hills trend almost south-west to north-east, the main lines being sharply cut at right angles by the Rhine gorge from Bingen to Bonn. The Hunsriick (2,684ft.) west of the Rhine is in line with the Taunus (2,89oft.) east of it, and the Eifel (2,493ft.) is similarly in line with the Westerwald (2,155ft.). Hunsruck and Eifel are separated by the deep cut of the Moselle valley just as Taunus and Westerwald are by that of the Lahn. Beyond the eastern rim of the Rhine basin are large volcanic masses, the chief of which are the Vogelsberg (2,53oft.) and the Rhon (3,i i 7ft.), and this is a zone of much faulting. It is drained mainly by the Weser and its tributaries and these last start close to the northern tributaries of the Main, so that there is a way through the mid-German hills from Frankfurt-am-Main in the south via Cassel to Hanover in the north, an important factor of the greatness of these cities. East of the Weser the hill lines of the Harz (highest point the Brocken 3,747ft.) and the Thiir inger Wald (3,225ft.) trend nearly north-west to south-east and are outlined and cut by faults with the result that they, and especially the Harz, have long been famed for metalliferous mining.
The valleys of the Thiiringer Wald are historically famous for their numerous small petty states, but under the German repub lic these have been grouped as a Thuringian state.
The Prussian Rhine province includes land on both sides of the Rhine (below Coblenz on the east and below Bingen on the west) in so far as that land is dominated by the life of the river and its cities, i.e., it consists of the Rhine gorge from Bingen to Bonn and of the bay of lowland to the north. From Mainz to Bingen the Rhine flows east to west, from the Rift valley to the gorge cutting through the mid-German hills. In this section and the last section of the Rift valley (Worms to Mainz) the land is relatively low and forms one part of the State of Hesse; the land in the bend has loess subsoil and is an area of ancient settlement, attested by rich finds of prehistoric objects of several periods.
The south-eastern end of the Thi ringer Wald and the north eastern end of the Franconian Jura approach one another and the mountains farther east (Erz Gebirge and Bohmer Wald) in the Fichtelgebirge (3,355ft.), which thus seem to be a centre of orographical and fluvial radiation. From them the Naab goes south between Franconian Jura and Bohmer Wald to the Danube, the Main goes west to the Rhine between the Thiiringer Wald and the Jura, the Saale and its tributaries flow north between the Thuringer Wald and the Erz Gebirge, while, in Bohemia, the Ohre flows east between the Erz Gebirge and the Bohmer Wald. Eastward beyond the Thiiringer Wald the hills trend north-east wards once more in the Erz Gebirge (4,o52ft.), the northern edge of the Bohemian block, as far as the sharp break, by which the Elbe passes from Bohemia to Germany, through a territory called from its scenery the Saxon Switzerland. Beyond the Elbe the hills trend once more south-eastward as the Riesengebirge (5,26oft.) and the Sudetes, forming the north-east side of the Bohemian block. In the middle belt of Germany the hill lines form two obtuse angles, broken in the one case by the Weser, in the other by the Elbe ; the lines enclosing these angles in the two cases are sub-parallel. The resemblances between these lines and those of the Baltic coasts are a feature. Farther east than the Sudetes the zone of dissected plateau-hills hitherto fol lowed sinks. The rocks concerned become buried under newer deposits, or where they outcrop, as in Upper Silesia and Lysa Gora, they form only moderate hills, entirely subordinate to the great Carpathian mountain arc, a part of the Alpine system, which dominates the orography of the region. Between Carpathians and Sudetes is the gesenke, the depression that gives communication between Oder and Danube via the March, or between Vienna and either Breslau (Oder basin) or Cracow (Vistula basin).
6. The northern plain is marked off from the hills by the lines forming the two obtuse angles mentioned above, but there are in addition irregularities which give what may be called the gulf of lowland that narrows up the Rhine beyond Cologne and the lowland bay east of the Harz, framed by the Thuringer Wald and Erzgebirge.
Beneath the hills the subsoil in the east is loess in large patches, a zone of early settlement for the most part not densely wooded. Meuse, Rhine, Weser, Saale, Elster, Elbe and Oder emerge from the hills on to the plain, and related to their emergence, though not always on them, are large historic cities of which one may mention Aachen, Cologne, Hanover, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden and Breslau. In Belgium and west Germany below the mid-German hills, running south-west to north-east, coalfields of great importance occur (Mons, Charleroi, Liege, Dusseldorf and the Ruhr).
At the Weser, as already said, the general hill line changes direction, becoming west-north-west to east-south-east, but hills taking this direction also stand out west of the Weser into the plain as the Teutoburger Wald. Between this on the north and the mid-German hills (Sauerland) on the south is the lowland of Westphalia, drained by Ruhr and Lippe, tributaries of the Rhine, and by the upper Ems. The Saxon lowland has coalfields, espe cially round Zwickau, and ore-veins in the Erz Gebirge (Ore mountains), etc. North-east of the Riesengebirge is another, but a smaller coalfield. In upper Silesia are still other coal fields, and also in west Poland, the latter annexed by Germany in Sept. The northern plain, apart from the foothill zone (fall line) just mentioned, has, as its main features, morainic hills, most arranged in lines more or less parallel to the Baltic coast and usually less than 600ft. high, though the Turmberg, west of Danzig reaches r,o86 feet. In the east one zone of morainic hills (including the Turmberg) stretches between Danzig and Stettin; south of it and parallel to it lies the Netze valley. South again another morainic zone may be traced eastward through the Masurian lake country at the back of east Prussia and westward in broken patches to Frankfurt-on-Oder. Its southern boundary is marked by the rivers Narew and (lower) Bug, the Vistula for some distance be low Warsaw, the upper Warthe, and the east-west section of the Oder above Ratzdorf. South of this again the land rises in Poland and in Germany with, in the latter country, Nieder Lausitz be tween the Spree and middle Elbe basins and farther west the Flaming between the middle Elbe and the Havel. The morainic zones are rich in small lakes, and those of eastern Germany, and the composite river lines between them, more or less focus on Berlin.
West of the Berlin area (Mark of Brandenburg) the morainic belts trend on the whole west-north-westwards, one with many lakes, in Mecklenburg and Schleswig Holstein where its general direction becomes south-to-north, and one between the lower Elbe and the line of the Aller and Weser. This latter, practically a continuation of the Flaming, is called the Altmark towards its eastern end (west of the Elbe) and the Liineburger Heide in the centre; rising to 56oft. it dies down towards the North sea coast south of Cuxhaven. West of the Liineburger Heide towards the Dutch frontier the land lies low in Oldenburg and Ost-Friesland and marsh abounds in the latter. Post-Pleistocene land sinking has brought the sea up the river mouths, so that most of Ger many's ports are river ports and have developed outports below themselves, as Bremerhaven below Bremen, Cuxhaven below Hamburg, Travemunde below Lubeck, Warnemunde below Ros tock and Swinemunde below Stettin. A great difference, however, is to be remarked between the coasts of the North sea and those of the Baltic. On the former, where the sea has broken up the ranges of dunes formed in bygone times and divided them into separate islands, the mainland has to be protected by massive dikes, while the Frisian islands are being gradually washed away by the waters. On the coast of East Friesland there are now only seven of these islands, of which Norderney is best known, while of the North Frisian islands, on the western coast of Schleswig, Sylt is the most considerable. Besides the ordinary waste of the shores, there have been extensive inundations by the sea within the historic period, the gulf of the Dollart having been so created in the year 1276. Sands surround the whole coast of the North sea to such an extent that the entrance to the ports is not practicable without the aid of pilots. Heligoland is a rocky island, but it also has been considerably reduced by the sea. The tides rise to the height of 12 or r 3f t. in the Jade bay and at Bremerhaven, and 6 or 7ft. at Hamburg.
The coast of the Baltic, on the other hand, possesses few islands, the chief being Alsen and Fehmarn off the coast of Schleswig Holstein, and Riigen off Pomerania. It has no exten sive sands, though on the whole very flat. The Baltic has no perceptible tides; and a great part of its coastline is in winter covered with ice, which also so blocks up the harbours that navigation is interrupted for several months every year. Its haffs fronting mouths of large rivers are rather extensions of the rivers than sea-bays cut off, though coastal subsidence has contributed to their evolution. The Pommersche or Oder Haff is separated from the sea by two islands, so that the river flows out by three mouths, the middle one (Swine) being the most considerable. The Frische Haff is formed by the Nogat, a branch of the Vistula, and by the Pregel, and communicates with the sea by means of the Pillauer Tief. The Kurische Haff receives the Memel, called Niemen in Russia, and has its outlet in the extreme north at Memel. Long narrow alluvial strips, called Nehrungen, lie between the last two haffs and the Baltic. The Baltic coast is further marked by large indenta tions, the gulf of Lubeck, that of Pomerania, east of Rugen, and the semi-circular bay of Danzig between the promontories of Rixhoft and Briisterort.
The rivers of the great lowland are naturally navigable and need very few locks for their improvement for this purpose. Nearly every one of them has long east-west sections between morainic zones, and most of them cut through those zones in south-north sections, which sometimes have important towns such as Torun (Thorn) on the Vistula and Posen (Poznan) on the Warthe, and Frankfurt on the Oder.
The east-to-west sections of two rivers in different parts of one and the same low zone between morainic hills have been linked in many cases by canals; e.g., the Vistula with the Netze, the Oder with the Spree and the Havel. Thus a system of river and canal communications supplementing railway and road connections focusses from a wide zone in the east upon Berlin and helps to account for the phenomenal growth of the city from insignificance in the mid-seventeenth century to a population of four millions at the present (194o) . The Oder is navigable from Ratibor near the Bohemian frontier, and long stretches of the Warthe and Netze are also navigable, as is the Neisse, a left-bank tributary. Large sections of Havel, Spree and Saale are navigable, and the Elbe itself can be navigated right up into Bohemia and its tributary, the Moldau, as far as Prague. By means of the river and canal systems combined there is thus continuous inland water communication from Ratibor on the upper Oder, or Torun on the Vistula, to Hamburg and the Elbe mouth.
The development of this system of communications and of its focus at Berlin may be said to have changed the face of Germany. Previously the great lowland had been on the whole of secondary importance with the Hanseatic cities along its coasts and the fall line cities above enumerated near the hills, and Magdeburg and a few others between. The growth of Berlin as a focus developed the political power of Prussia, which spread both to the coast and to the foothills and received a further impetus when the potato spread as a food plant, especially on the sandy soils of the north, and still more when coal came to be utilised for industry. Coal gave a new growth to many old cities along the foothills, thus making modern German industry in a considerable measure a new development of old cities as contrasted with modern British industry which mostly grew in places previously small. German industry has also brought many new towns to birth.
The valley of the Rhine above Mainz has the greatest mean heat, the mildest winter and the highest summer temperature. Arys, on the Spirdingsee, on the lake plateau of east Prussia, has a like winter temperature to the Brocken at 3,20o feet. The Baltic has the lowest spring temperature, and the autumn there is also not characterized by an appreciably higher degree of warmth. In central Germany the high plateaux of the Erz and Fichtelgebirge are the coldest regions. In south Germany the upper Bavarian plain experiences a harsh winter and a cold summer. The warmest districts are the Rheintal from Karlsruhe downwards, less than 3ooft. above sea-level, and protected by mountains. The same holds true of the valleys of the Neckar, Main and Mosel. Hence the vine is everywhere cultivated in these districts. The mean summer temperature there is 66° and up wards, while the average temperature of January is above 32° F. The climate of north-western Germany is oceanic, the summers not being too hot (mean summer temperature 6o° to 62°), and snow in winter remaining but a short time on the ground. West of the Weser the average temperature of January exceeds 32° (it is 34° at Cologne) ; to the east it sinks to 3o°, and therefore the Elbe is generally covered with ice for some months of the year, as are also its tributaries. The farther one proceeds to the east the greater are the contrasts of summer and winter. While the average summer warmth of Germany is 6o° to 62°, the January temperature falls as low as 26° to 28° in West Prussia, Posen and Silesia, and 2 2 ° to 26° in East Prussia and upper Silesia. 'Ihe navigation of the eastern rivers is interrupted by ice.
Rainfall takes place at all seasons, but chiefly in summer. The rainfall is greatest in the Bavarian tableland and the hilly regions of western Germany. For the Eifel, Sauerland, Harz, Thuringian Forest, Rhon, Vogelsberg, Spessart, the Black Forest, the Vosges, etc., the annual average may be stated at 34in. or more, while in the lower terraces of south-western Germany, as in the Erz gebirge and the Sudetic range, it is estimated at 3o to 3 2in. only. The same average obtains also on the humid north-west coast of Germany as far as Bremen and Hamburg. In the remaining parts of western Germany, on the shores of farther Pomerania and in East Prussia, it amounts to upwards of 24 inches. In the best wine districts, i.e., in the valley of the Rhine below Strasbourg, in the Palatinate, and also in the valley of the Main, no more than from i6 to loin. fall. Mecklenburg, Brandenburg and Lusatia, Saxony and the plateau of Thuringia, West Prussia, Posen and lower Silesia have an annual rainfall of only i6 to 20 inches. Thunderstorms are most frequent in July. The soils of Germany, in correlation with these facts of climate, are gen erally of the brown group (see EUROPE) moderately leached, save near the sea where the leaching has generally been more intense and where the glacial subsoil often includes much sand. The soils on the Jurassic rocks of the south are specially rich in humus.
In the southern regions of warm summers where there is shelter the woods contain chestnut and walnut, and the fig, peach and apricot may be grown here and there. Latitude 51 ° is approxi mately the northern limit of the vine in Germany, and it is mostly grown near Rhine and Danube and as usual near the crops limit, it is only special varieties grown with care that are of much value. Reference has already been made to the potato which yields good crops in the sandy north, while the beetroot has also spread in the northern plain and mid-Germany. Flax grows chiefly in the north and hops chiefly in the south. Among the grains rye is important almost everywhere, with wheat, barley and oats as well ; maize ripens only in the south ; buckwheat mostly in the north. Concerning the wild animals of Germany, little needs to be added to what has been said for Europe ; wolves are rare except at times in the east, bears survive in the Alps and the elk in the forests of East Prussia. The stork is seen for about 17o days, the house-swallow i 6o, the snow-goose 26o and the snipe 220; the period is 20-3o days shorter in the north than in the south.
Hitler's annexations of territory, however, which earned for him among his admirers the new title of "Aggrandizer of the Reich," much more than compensated for the war losses. Up to the summer of 1939 these additions, which created a "Greater Germany," according to the preliminary results of the census of May 17, 1939, are given in Table I.
These additions, totalling 17,700,000, brought the population of Greater Germany in the summer of 1939 to a grand total of 86,400,00o. However, Bohemia-Moravia was not completely in tegrated with the rest of the Reich like the other added territories. It formed a German "Protectorate" and to some extent was al lowed to have its own laws and administration. The German conquest of Poland in Sept. 1939, brought some 15,000.00o per sons under German rule; Danzig, the Polish Corridor, Posen, and small districts on the Silesian frontier were annexed as an in tegral part of the Reich; the remainder of the conquered Polish territory was placed temporarily under a German governor. If the conquered Polish territory and the Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate are not included, the population of Greater Germany was 000 in 1939. Its distribution and growth since 1925 may be seen in Table II. The table shows also the administrative divisions of the Reich, including the provinces of Prussia, and the Gaue (ad ministrative districts, formerly provinces) of Austria, which is now known as the "Ostmark." If the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia is included, with its population in 1939 estimated at 6,8o5,000, the total population of Greater Germany is 86,532,000. This is about equal to the com bined home populations of France and England, and about half that of Soviet Russia.
In 1933 the National Socialist leaders were greatly alarmed at the low birth-rate. Together with the loss of population by the three war-causes mentioned above, the Nazis feared that Germany would soon have a stationary or even declining population. Fur thermore, there was an abnormal excess of old men, owing to the loss of young men on the battle-field. Hitler and his leaders ardently desired a larger population in order to give the Third Reich greater industrial and military strength. Therefore, several measures were adopted 1933-39 to promote population increase. The enforcement of the law against abortions was tightened. Young people were even taught that it was no social disgrace to have illegitimate children for the good of the Fatherland. Gener ous tax exemptions were granted to families according to the num ber of their children. Unmarried persons had to pay a special additional tax. Most publicized, perhaps, was the Government's granting of marriage loans (Ehestandsdarlehen) of i,000 marks to newly-married couples who applied for them. If the marriage was childless, the loan had to be repaid after a certain period; but for every child born alive one-fourth of the loan was cancelled. In the years 1933-35 the Government expended 523,000 marks (about $210,000) for these marriage loans. In 1936 28.1% of the newly-wed couples applied for and received a total of 171,640 marks; for 1937 the figures were respectively 29.7% and marks; and in 1938 38.7% of newly-wed couples were aided. These measures brought a moderate increase in the population figures, as will be seen from the table on next page, but not as much improvement as the National Socialist leaders would have liked to see. In 1939 the birth-rate rose to 20 per 1,000 population.
The death-rate in the 185os was 26.3 per ',coo of the popula tion. After the Franco-Prussian war it fell pretty steadily to 15 per 1,000 in 1913. This decline in the death-rate was largely owing to improved medicine and especially to the Government's measures to reduce infant mortality by providing lying-in hos pitals, milk dispensaries, and better protection for expectant moth ers. After the war the death-rate again fell fairly steadily from 15.1 per 1,000 in 1920 to 11.7 in 1937. Consequently the excess of births over deaths from 1933 to 1939 in Old Germany (exclu sive of territories added by Hitler) was 2,775,000 or about 465,000 per annum.
Of the total population of Greater Germany (not including Bohemia-Moravia) in 1939, 38.700,000 were male, and 40,700,000 female. The excess of females, as in all German population figures since the war, tended to decline. In 1919 for every I,000 males there were 1,1o1 females: in 142K, 1,071: in Iofl. 1.06O: and in The number of divorces in National Socialist Germany declined from 54,744 in 1934 to 46,786 in 1937.
Emigration from Germany reached a high point of 220,000 in 1884, after which it declined sharply, and was largely offset by immigration, chiefly of Polish agricultural labourers in the eastern provinces and industrial workers in the Rhineland. For the post war period no exact recent figures are available, but it is estimated that from 1925 to 1933 the emigration exceeded the immigration by 234,00o persons, and that the tide then turned, the immigra tion exceeding the emigration by 666,000 persons in the six years from 1933 to The statistics of marriages, births, and deaths in the German Reich (including the Saarland but excluding Austria and the Sude tenland) in recent years may be seen in Table III.
than usual so that the students could go into the country to aid in the harvesting. Some regulations were issued directly forbid ding peasants to move into certain towns. But in spite of all this, the lure of the city seemed to be effective, and one of the social problems which was most frequently discussed in German news papers in 1939 was how to counteract this "flight from the country." By the census of May 61 cities had each more than inhabitants. The total population of these 61 cities was 23,900,000, or about 3o% of the total population of Greater Ger many. The 26 cities with more than 250,000 inhabitants in together with their population at the preceding census of 1933, are given in Table V.
With these steadily increasing numbers, the density of popula tion in Old Germany (i.e. including the Saarland but not the later annexations) increased from 124.2 per square kilometre in 1910, to 134.3 in 1925, 14o.3 in 1933, and 147•6 in 1939. If Austria and the Sudetenland but not Bohemia-Moravia are included, the density of population in Greater Germany in 1939 was 131.3 per square kilometre. It is this growing pressure of population living within an area no larger than Texas which makes the National Socialists proclaim so loudly and insistently that they must have more elbow room or "living room" (Lebensraum).
The most rapid increase of density, of course, is to be found in the cities. Before the World War there was already such a strong shift from the country to the larger towns and cities, that it caused some alarm to the Government. After 1919 this trend continued, until by 1933 the percentage of people in urban dis tricts had become greater than those in rural districts in 1871, as may be seen from the figures for Old Germany in Table IV.
The National Socialists tried in various ways to prevent this "flight from the country" (Landflucht) into the towns and cities. Much was done to improve the conditions of the peasant. He gets good prices guaranteed for his products, though he is subject, like everyone else doing any kind of business in the Third Reich, to a great many petty and vexatious regulations. Some peasants were elevated into a "peasant nobility," if they had no Jewish ancestors since 1800. They have hereditary peasant holdings which cannot be seized for non-payment of interest on mortgages or for any other cause except incompetence or dishonourable con duct on the part of hereditary peasant owner. Radios have been sold by the million to relieve the monotony of life on the farm— and to afford a medium for filling the peasant with all sorts of Nazi propaganda. Students, soldiers, white-collar workers, and others are urged or compelled to help the peasant get in his crops; in the early summer of 1939 the universities were closed earlier Constitution of the Republic.—Germany was organized under a constitution given by a National Assembly at Weimar on August 11, 1919, on the basis of sovereignty of the people and of recognition of the rights of constituent lands or states. Admin istration and legislation, including financial legislation, relating to the whole republic were controlled by the organs of the constitu tion of the republic, but, in matters relating to a particular land or state, and not contravening the general law, power resided with the corresponding organs of the constitution of the land or state con cerned. The republic as a whole had exclusive charge of foreign and colonial affairs, questions of citizenship and migration, cus toms dues, coinage, armaments, postal organization and tele phones. It had to make laws relating to crime, passports, care of the poor, the press and public meetings, infant welfare, health services, protection of workers, war pensions, weights and meas ures, regulation of industry and transport by air, land and sea, insurance, theatres, protection of natural beauty, etc.
Each land may, in general, make laws on any other matters, but the Reich has large duties and powers of oversight. In case of dispute either the Reich or a land can appeal to the Supreme Court or to other authority as may be provided in special cases by law. Each land is required to have a constitution based on universal secret suffrage and the principles of proportional representation, and the same principles must be applied in the smaller units of local government. The division of the Reich into lands and any alteration of the scheme of division or of boundaries is held to be subject to the will of the people concerned and careful safeguard ing articles are included. Disputes between lands are referred to the Supreme Court, and the president of the republic is required to carry out the decision of the Supreme Court. A feature of the constitution is that there is nothing to prevent any group of people now outside the republic from asking for admission to the status of a land within it.
The Government was under a president, who might be any Ger man over 35 and was chosen by universal direct suffrage; he had, more or less, the powers and duties of a constitutional monarch; he held office for seven years and might be re-elected. The Govern ment consisted of a chancellor and ministers appointed by the president, and the chancellor and his ministers were responsible for the acts of the Government.
The Reichstag was the single-chamber legislature elected by pro portional representation for the whole republic on the basis of party-lists; one seat in the Reichstag was allotted for every 6o,000 votes. No by-elections took place between elections, any vacancy being filled by appointment of the next person on the party-list. The Ministry must have the confidence of the Reichstag.
With complete power thus in his hands, Hitler proceeded to or ganize the Totalitarian State, that is, a State which should em brace and control every aspect of life. All other political parties except the National Socialist were dissolved. The 17 States of the Reich were gradually shorn of much of their former power of local government which was transferred to the central government of the Third Reich at Berlin. Prime ministers of the former States were replaced by governors (Statthalter) appointed by Chancellor Hitler or by his Reich Minister of the Interior, Dr. Wilhelm Frick. State legislatures ceased to exist. The States thus gradu ally came to be little more than administrative divisions of Reich central government at Berlin. Local executive boards were merged with, or replaced by, Reich boards.
The Government of the Third Reich is a sort of dual affair. Existing side by side are "Party" and "State." The former is the National Socialist Party, with a complete set of boards or minis tries (treasury, foreign affairs, education, etc.) paralleling those of the State. The State consists of all the regular machinery of government, so far as it survived the changes made by Chan cellor Hitler; these changes were mostly in the curtailing of the functions of the former States like Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, etc.; the central administrative machinery of the Reich was not greatly modified except that it was given many new tasks. Tolerable harmony between the State and Party was secured by the fact that many important persons, like Hitler, Goering, Hess, Frick, Goebbels, Darre and others, were high officials in both organ izations. There was much discussion as to the relation between Party and State. In general, it may be said that the Party was the more influential organization, according to the principle : "The Party directs the State." The National Socialist Party grew rapidly in numbers before Hitler became Chancellor, because all new members were wel comed as increasing the political power of Hitler who hoped there by to seize control of the Reich Government. But soon after he was appointed Chancellor, membership in the Party was "closed." The early members who had borne the burden and heat of the day from the beginning, that is, the "old fighters" with "low numbers," did not care to see their distinction dimmed by having the priv ilege of membership conferred on too great a number, after the goal of political power had finally been achieved in Jan. It was always a practice of the Party that, in awarding high office or in giving jobs and other advantages, preference should be given to Party members, and especially to "old fighters." There fore, soon after he became Chancellor, Hitler announced that no new members were to be admitted from among persons who might have sought membership but did not do so in the earlier days when the Party was making its hard struggle for power. The only large regular additions to membership after 1933 were from the ranks of the Hitler Youth who had reached maturity and shown that they would make reliable and worthy recruits to carry on the work of the Party. Occasional exceptions, however, were made to the rule closing the Party to non-members who were already of age in as when Hitler conferred membership on Dr. Schacht and all other non-member cabinet officials in Jan. 1937.
After 1933 the National Socialist Party varied in numbers as some were "purged" out of it and as others were taken in, but it probably approximated 3,000,000. Since the Party directs the State, Germany is ruled by a small highly organized minority, representing less than five per cent of the whole population. Or it might be said that Germany is ruled by the dictatorial power of one man, since Adolf Hitler as Fuehrer is the supreme author ity in both Party and State.
In 1937 the members of the National Socialist Party were or ganized in 33 provinces, including the organization for Germans living abroad. Each province (Gau) was under a provincial leader (Gauleiter) appointed by the supreme Leader, Adolf Hitler. They were further organized in 76o districts (Kreisen) , 21,345 local groups (Ortsgruppen), 74,091 "cells," and 397,040 "blocks." By 194o these numbers were somewhat increased; a new Gau was created for the annexed Sudeten Germans, for each of the six former provinces of Austria, and for the Warthe (Polish Corri dor) District.
The "block leader" is the lowest representative of the Party's sovereignty. He is assisted by "block wardens" of the German Labour Front, of the National Socialist Welfare Association, and of the National Socialist Women's Association. Together they are supposed to "advise national comrades on all problems of life, help them as far as possible in case of need, and in every way take care of them." For that purpose the block wardens must know everything about all the 4o to 6o families within their block, who in turn must answer all questions asked by the Party representatives. Germans deny that this is merely an efficient spying system, and insist that it is really a method of carrying out the principle : "The common good takes precedence over the individual good;" this is possible only "if a relation of mutual trust develops between the block leaders and the national com rades." During the years following 1933 the Party steadily increased its control over the Totalitarian State. It was able to accomplish this by means of the four functions which it efficiently fulfilled: (1) It furnished from its membership nearly all the higher officials of the central and local governments of the State; (2) It main tained a wide-spreading network of directing bureaus and mass organizations, side by side with those of the State, as agencies for its functions of educating the people in National Socialist ideology, of caring for their welfare, and of enforcing the Na tional Socialist view of life (Weltanschauung) ; (3) It developed and spread the dogmas that are the driving force of the National Socialist "Movement" and the Totalitarian State; (4) It pro tected the State against all internal German enemies—grumblers, critics, traitors, religious opponents and so forth—by a very active radio and press propaganda and by the ever-present Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, and secret police (Geheim-Staats-Polizei, commonly abbreviated as Gestapo), just as the regular army (Reichswehr) stood ready to protect Germany against all foreign foes.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy in Prussia includes the arch bishopric of Cologne with bishops at Munster, Paderborn and Trier. The bishopric of Culm is still attached to the archbishopric of Gnesen and Posen, though the rest of that archdiocese was in Poland. Breslau, Meissen, Hildesheim and Osnabruck are directly subject to the Holy See. In south Germany the arch diocese of Bamberg includes the dioceses of Eichstatt, Speyer, WUrzburg, the Bavarian archdiocese of Munchen and Freising, those of Augsburg, Passau and Regensburg, and the archdiocese of Freiburg, those of Fulda, Limburg, Mainz and Rottenburg (in Wurttemberg). There are vicars apostolic for Saxony, Anhalt and the Northern Missions. The Old Catholics who seceded from the Roman Catholic church in consequence of the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility are a small group.
(H. J. F. ; S. B. F.) Under the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919 by representatives of the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan as "Principal Allied and Associated Powers" and by twenty-two lesser Powers (but not subsequently ratified by the United States), Germany was given a period ending on March 31, 192o to demobilize and reduce her army to 7 divisions of infantry and 3 of cavalry, the total number of effectives after that date not to exceed Ioo.000 including a maximum of 4,000 officers, of whom not more than 30o were to be employed in the Ministries of War in the different states of Germany and in the administrations attached to them. The civilian personnel for army administration services was not to exceed one-tenth of the personnel in each class provided by the Budget of 1913. "The Great General Staff and all similar organizations shall be dissolved and may not be reconstituted in any form." State customs officers, forest guards, coast guards, gendarmes and local or municipal police might not be assembled for military training, and their numbers were to be limited. Up to the date when Germany should join the League of Nations her armaments, munitions and mili tary material were strictly reduced, and after that date only to be increased with the sanction of the Council of the League. Impor tation of all such material was prohibited. The maximum (but not the minimum, as in the subsequent Treaty with Austria, q.v.) strength of army field formations was prescribed. No grouping of divisions under more than two army-corps headquarter staffs was permitted.
Universal compulsory military service was forbidden, only voluntary enlistment was permitted. Officers retained in the army must serve therein at least up to the age of 45 years. Newly appointed officers must serve on the active list for at least 25 consecutive years, and not more than 5% of the total effectives must be discharged in one year for any reason before their time of service expired. Other ranks must serve for 12 years, the same 5% rule applying to their discharge. The number of military schools and of students therein was strictly to be limited. Edu cational establishments and societies and associations of every description were forbidden to occupy themselves with any mili tary matters, to carry out any military instruction or to be con nected with Ministries of War or with any other military author ities.
He startled the world on March 16, 1935, by announcing that he would reintroduce the forbidden system of universal military service. This created a conscript army of approximately 500,000, organized provisionally into 12 army corps and 36 divisions. Sol diers were to serve for one year and then enter the reserves who could be mobilized in time of war. This measure was quite universally popular in Germany for many reasons. It meant that another section of the hated Versailles "dictate" had been scrapped. It restored most of the military system under which Germany had overthrown Napoleon I. and grown steadily more powerful for a century thereafter. It helped solve the unemploy ment problem; besides the unemployed now enrolled for military service, much employment was furnished by the need for building new barracks and for furnishing all sorts of military equipment for the enlarged army. And even by many persons not particu larly sympathetic with the Nazi regime, a stronger army was wel comed as a dependable force which might save the country from chaos if the Hitler Government should suddenly come to an end.
Hitler's decree of March 16, 1935, was only the beginning of a series of measures enormously increasing every aspect of Ger many's armaments. In July the General Staff, which according to the Versailles Treaty was to be dissolved but which had not really wholly disappeared, was officially reconstituted. In October the War Academy in Berlin was reopened under the command of Gen eral Adam, head of the Munich Army Corps. By a decree of Aug. 24, 1936, Hitler again took the world by surprise by extending the term of service from one to two years. This again increased the regular army to about 800,000 men, or approximately the size of the German army at the opening of the World War. This two year service requirement did not meet with the same general en thusiasm as the one-year service law of the preceding year. It was felt that it would delay for a year the age at which men could become self-supporting and marry ; that it would mean increased taxation and restriction of food imports; and that the European situation was not so dangerous as to necessitate this additional measure of safety and self-defence. The people, nevertheless, re signed themselves to it.
During the next three years the army was further increased by enlarging the officer corps, by enrolling soldiers who for lack of equipment and officers could not be called up at once, and by in corporating in the German Army the forces of the former Aus trian Republic. By the summer of 1939 the German Army was estimated to number about i,000,000 officers and men. Including the trained reservists who were mobilized on account of the strained relations with Poland, a total of nearly 2,000,000 were under arms. No exact figures were available, as Germany did not publish any statistics on this subject. This figure of nearly 2, 000,000 did not include the police, the SA (Brown Shirts), the SS (Black Shirts), or the semi-military formations known as the Labour Service and Hitler Youth. Nor did it include the Slovak ian Army of 30,00o regulars and 300,00o reservists which Hitler declared on Aug. 18, 1939, were henceforth to be under German command.
These treaty obligations were faithfully observed by Germany from 1919 to 1933. In building replacement battleships, how ever, as she was permitted to do by the treaty, she used such skill and ingenuity,bywelding instead of riveting the plates and by other improvements, that the resulting "pocket battleships" like the "Deutschland" were really much more powerful and formidable than any 1o,000-ton vessels in any foreign navies.
By the end of 1934 Hitler had secretly begun the construction of submarines, though these were forbidden to Germany by the treaty ; and he even made a formal denial to the British that any submarine building was taking place. Six months later, by the Anglo-German Naval Pact of June 18, 1935 (anniversary of Waterloo when Germans and English had fought side by side against Napoleon I.), Hitler persuaded the English virtually to approve his nullification of the naval clauses of the Versailles Treaty. Great Britain had begun to realize that it would be dif ficult to prevent Germany from building up her navy again, and therefore judged it prudent to come to a friendly and timely agree ment with her. Hitler, on his side, professed to want to avoid Tirpitz's great mistake before the World War of antagonizing Great Britain by any extensive naval program which might threaten British naval superiority. Accordingly, by this naval pact of 1935, Great Britain winked at the scrapping of the Versailles naval limitations, and Hitler promised not to build beyond 35% of the British fleet in each category of ships, except that in the case of submarines he might build up to 45% (to be offset by pro portionate tonnage reductions in other classes of vessels). Fur thermore, he might even build up to 100%, that is, to parity, of British submarine tonnage, if he felt that conditions had changed, and if he first gave Great Britain due notice.
In Dec. 1938, Hitler gave Great Britain due notice to this effect. Germany was already approaching the 45% submarine limit of the 1935 pact, and wanted to continue further submarine con struction. The "changed conditions" which she noted were that the Soviet Union and the other European Powers had built, were building, or had appropriated moneys for the construction of submarine ships and tonnage as given in Table VI.
Though Germany had nearly as many submarines as Britain, their total tonnage was still below 45% of the British submarine tonnage, because many of the German U-boats were comparatively small: 31 were small 250-ton "minnows," designed primarily for coast defence or for use in the Baltic, although they had a cruis ing radius of 1,200m. and could be used in the North Sea and against British commerce; I I were 517-ton vessels with a cruis ing radius of 3,000m. ; 8 were "ocean-going" ships of 74o tons each; and the tonnage of the others was not accurately known. In building up to submarine parity with Great Britain, Hitler no doubt intended to use a large part of the available tonnage in building larger submarines of the ocean-going type. He hoped also, by sticking to the modified naval pact of 1935, still to avert Anglo-German naval rivalry and antagonism which had been so unfortunate before the World War and which he so vigorously condemned in his autobiography, Mein Kamp f .
After the Munich Agreement of Sept. 1938, which began the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, the British lost confidence in Hitler's honesty and professions of peace. Britain began rapidly to arm. Hitler was angered to find that he could no longer lull Britain into a passive and friendly attitude while he himself went forward re-making the map of Europe.
After his annexation of Bohemia-Moravia in March 1939, Britain's attitude stiffened still further, and she began to organize a "stop Hitler" front. Hitler thereupon denounced the Anglo-German Naval Pact of 1935 altogether, taking the singular attitude that, since Britain had changed from friendliness to unfriendliness, he was no longer bound by the treaty he had signed with her. He was now free to go ahead and build up his naval forces as fast as his resources would allow.
Meanwhile he had been proceeding with the building of large naval vessels. Germany had three of the "Deutschland," or "pocket battle ship" class. The "Seydlitz" launched on Jan. 19, 1939, and a sister ship launched six months later in July are io,000-ton ships, 199 metres long, 21.7 beam, and 4.6 draught; they have a speed of 32 knots, carry a catapult for aircraft, and are armed with eight 20.3cm. guns, twelve 10.5cm., twelve 3.7cm., and have twelve torpedo tubes. A new type of vessel, a kind of "carrier-cruiser" was launched at Kiel on Dec. 8, 1938. It has a 19,00o tonnage and a heavy armament of 16 large guns, but can carry at least 4o aeroplanes. A sister "carrier-cruiser" was under construction. Germany was also building two large battle ships, probably of about 35,00o tons each, but the details were kept secret.
Military aircraft were forbidden to Germany by the Versailles Treaty. But Germany developed very rapidly and successfully her civil aviation both before and after Hitler came into power. The training which civil pilots received in the Lufthansa, which has a network of passenger lines all over Central Europe as well as to South America and Asia, was useful in preparing for the development of military aviation. The creation after 1933 of a great air-fleet of heavy bombers, pursuit and scout planes, and other types, was largely the result of the tremendous energy and driving force of General Hermann Goering, Hitler's minister of aviation. During 1935 he razed to the ground a whole block of buildings in the crowded centre of Berlin on the Leipzigerstrasse and put up within a year a gigantic building with 2,500 offices to house his subordinates. The Tempelhofer Field on the southern edge of Berlin was extended to be the largest airport in the world. Hangars, often concealed and protected against attacks from the air, were constructed in various parts of Germany. Special attractions were offered to young men to enter the air service. With the annexation of Austria and Bohemia-Moravia, the latter being es pecially important in this connection, a considerable addition was made to the German air forces. The exact number of Germany's various types of military planes is not known, but an estimate by an expert, taking into account numbers of planes and pilots, speed, re placement, morale and other factors, gave the following relative rat ing to European air forces in Feb. 1939: Germany so, Italy 6, Great Britain 5, and France 2.
The manufacture of arms and ammunition for export was also forbidden to Germany by the Versailles Treaty. But The League of Nations Armaments Year Book, published on Nov. 30, 1936, showed that already in 1935 Germany stood sixth among the chief exporters of arms in that year, the figures in U.S. dollars of the old standard being : Great Britain, $10,731,000; Czechoslovakia, $10,5i7,000; France, $6,548,000 ; United States, ; Sweden, $3,300,000 ; and Germany, $2,462,000. Since 1935 Germany's exports of arms and ammunition have considerably increased, especially to the smaller States of southeastern Europe, South America, and, for a while, to China.
Higher the German Republic, 1919-1933, a fine training was given to the Reichswehr, the professional army of 100,000 men permitted by the Versailles Treaty. This training was largely the work of Generals Hans von Seeckt, Werner von Fritsch, and the other German officers of rigid Prussian discipline and high standards, who were taken over from the old Imperial Army which had fought the World War. They laid emphasis on the value of dis cipline and intelligence among the men, of rapid motorized equipment and of the element of sudden surprise (Blitzkrieg or "lightning war"). The highest possible efficiency in the Reichswehr was all the more necessary, in view of its limited numbers, because of the existence of various semi-military partisan organizations: the illegal monarchist "Black Reichswehr" or "Free Corps," composed of discontented ex officers and demobilized soldiers, who perpetrated acts of violence against the Republic, as well as against the French and the Poles ; the "Reichsbanner," made up of men who wanted to defend the Republic against its domestic enemies ; the "Steel Helmets," a less demonstrative group of war veterans ; and the Hitlerite Brown Shirts ("Sturm Abteilungen," known for short as "SA"), rapidly growing in numbers and in provocative acts of disorder which aimed at the ultimate overthrow of the republican parliamentary democracy. Thanks to General von Seeckt's organizing genius, it was generally reckoned that if it actually came to fighting or civil war, one Reichs wehr soldier would be equal to ten Brown Shirts. Thus, under the Republic, the old Junker landed aristocracy continued to dominate the higher command in the army. Though a majority of the officers were probably monarchist at heart, they on the whole stood aside from politics. They were negatively loyal to the Republic in the sense that they supported no attempts to overthrow it. In fact, they were ready, if need be, positively to defend it, as for example at the time of Hit ler's Beer Hall Putsch on Nov. 9, 1923. But for the most part the Reichswehr stood aloof from politics as a non-political pillar sup porting the existing State.
When Hitler became Chancellor in Jan. 1933, he made his personal friend, General, later Field Marshal, von Blomberg, one of his cabinet as minister of war. Von Blomberg was then a man barely past fifty, had visited Fort Leavenworth in the United States, and travelled about in the world. Though belonging to the old Prussian tradition by inheritance, he had become a convinced National Socialist. For many months he and the Reichswehr officers continued the tradition of keeping the army aloof from politics. At the same time they sup ported the measures by which Hitler began secretly to increase the Reichswehr beyond the size stipulated in the Versailles Treaty. With this increase of the Reichswehr after 1933 there developed a conflict between it and the Nazi Brown Shirts, who were becoming increasingly numerous, powerful, and obstreperous. The Reichswehr officers wanted to preserve General von Seeckt's high efficiency, the two-century old predominance of the Junker families, and the non partisan character of their organization, all of which they feared was threatened by the "plot" of Captain Roehm. This Brown Shirt leader, formerly an intimate friend of Hitler, aimed at getting a con trolling influence over the Reichswehr by infiltrating his Brown Shirt followers into its ranks, increasing his personal power, and using it for Nazi political purposes. These purposes were in direct conflict with the ideals of the Reichswehr. Some of its officers therefore demanded that Hitler put an end to Roehm's activities. This was one of the elements of the terrible "Blood Purge" of June 30, 1934• By Hitler's personal intervention Roehm and his fellow "plotters" were shot, mostly without any trial. Seventy-seven were "executed" according to Hitler's statement in the Reichstag a few weeks later ; in reality several times that number were killed—some estimates go as high as twelve hundred—because individual Nazis took advantage of this affair to murder private enemies or others whom they feared or dis liked for one reason or another, like General Schleicher who had been Chancellor just before Hitler. Some unfortunates were murdered through mistaken identity. After this Blood Purge the remaining Brown Shirts were given a month's vacation and greatly reduced in numbers and importance, though in 1937 and thereafter they again were given by Hitler an important political and military role. As the other semi-military organizations (with the exception of the Elite Guard or Black Shirts) had also been dissolved or ceased to be of importance by the end of 1934, the Reichswehr was left in a stronger position than ever.
Hitler's startling decree of March 16, 1935, changing the Reichs wehr from a professional army to one based on the old Prussian system of universal military service and enlarging it to about men, as explained above, further increased its power. But it also brought the germs of a new conflict between the older officers and the more radical Nazis. A majority of the higher command disliked the methods and aims of the more radical Nazi leaders and even dis approved of some of Hitler's moves. In 1936 they advised against his decision for the military reoccupation of the Rhine valley and the demilitarized area west of it. They feared that this decision, which scrapped another of the humiliating limitations of the Versailles Treaty, might be opposed with force by the French, and they did not believe that even the enlarged Reichswehr would be a match for the French Army. But France did not march. Hitler won a bloodless triumph, both over the Versailles "dictate" and over his own more cautious generals.
Nazi persecution of Protestant and Catholic church organizations also added to friction between the older officers and the Nazi leaders. In Nov. 1937, the army chaplains addressed a long but dignified letter of protest to Hitler. They denounced in strong terms the tendencies that were undermining Christianity in Germany and dividing the German people against one another, yet were tolerated or actively furthered by Nazi officials and Government propaganda. They de clared among other things: "Here is seen most clearly the breach in the German nation. One half believes enthusiastically everything that is officially announced; the other half holds that it is all a lie. This situation has been nurtured by the contradiction between the State's promises and its practices. The sense of injustice suffered is con stantly growing. Protestant men and women, and not only pastors, who sought nothing more than to serve their church and their faith, have been arrested and held in concentration camps for months and are still there. The conscientious Christian in Germany today is wholly unprotected. The effect of this struggle on moral preparedness is evident. The full enthusiasm that has been natural to the Protestant German when the fate of the Fatherland was at stake will be lacking if matters go on as they are. The official war propaganda also will suffer because a not unimportant section of the population will believe not a single word after what they have experienced in the church struggle." In view of the strict discipline in the German Army, it is almost inconceivable that the chaplains could have drawn up this protest without the knowledge and probably the approval of the higher officers.
This protest of the chaplains was followed early in 1938 by another on the part of General von Fritsch and other officers, not on religious grounds, but on a social matter. General von Blomberg, a widower, married a woman beneath him in social rank. The old officers, with aristocratic and conservative traditions, insisted to Hitler that this was intolerable and that Blomberg must retire. The question was complicated by an intrigue on the part of Heinrich Himmler, the powerful head of the Secret Police and the Black Shirts, to become Blomberg's successor, just as Roehm in 1934 had sought to get con trol of the Army. Hitler had already decided at this time, according to the speech which he made at the opening of the new Chancellor's Palace in 1939, that he was soon going to intervene in Austria and annex it, as he did in March. With this military action in prospect, he did not want dissension and opposition in the Higher Command. He was also incensed that he and General Goering had been persuaded by Marshal von Blomberg to be witnesses at Blomberg's private wedding ceremony without being informed of the antecedents and character of the bride. Under all these circumstances he decided on another purge—this time a bloodless one. On Feb. 4, 1938, it was announced that Blomberg, Fritsch, and some 50 other high officers were retired "for reasons of health." Their places were filled with men on whom Hitler felt that he could depend without question. Again in November, after the Munich Agreement, there was another smaller and likewise bloodless purge of Army officers. General Ludwig Beck, who was reported to have warned Hitler against going to war with Czechoslovakia over the Sudeten crisis, was replaced as chief-of staff by General von Halder. Several other high officers were retired in favour of men who were politically more reliable.
While the Higher Command, cautious, conservative, and aloof from politics during the first years of the National Socialist regime, had been reckoned as a force for peace and a check on rash enterprises, this was less the case after Hitler's success in the Sudeten crisis. As the old officers were weeded out, they were naturally replaced by unquestioning supporters of Hitler's wishes. Likewise the new recruits were young men who had served in the ranks of the Hitler Youth organizations and the Labour Service, where they had been effectively exposed to thorough indoctrination in the Nazi Weltanschauung. So the Army became much more of a Nazi instrument than in the first five years of the Third Reich. In addition to the Army, much military, and a great deal of political power was exercised by the omnipresent secret police and by the Elite Guard or Black Shirts (Schutz-Staffel, or "SS"), both of which took a prominent part along with the Army in the seizure of Austria, the Sudetenland, and Bohemia-Moravia.
The German Army at the beginning of 2939 comprised 43 regular divisions, together with 4 light motorized divisions, 3 mountain divi sions in Bavaria and Austria, 5 armoured-car or tank divisions, and a cavalry brigade in East Prussia. These forces were organized into 18 army corps or defence districts (Wehrkreise), each comprising about 6o,000 men, and these in turn into 6 chief commands having their headquarters in Berlin, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Dresden, Leipzig, Vienna, and Hanover. The Czechs in Bohemia-Moravia were ex empted from service in the German Army after their annexation in March 1939. A decree of August so, at the time of sharp tension between Germany and Poland over Danzig, ordered all Czechs to surrender all arms and explosives in their possession to the German authorities ; cases of disobedience were to be tried by German, not Czech, courts, and penalties of five years in the penitentiary or even death were threatened.
The Commander in Chief of all the armed forces of every branch is the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. To secure complete unity of command he exercises his authority through his personal representative, General Wilhelm Keitel. Under him are the heads of the three chief branches of the military forces: General von Brauchitsch (Army), Admiral Raeder (Navy), and General Milch (Air-forces).
From 1899, however, Germany began to pay more attention to her fixed defences, and in the next years a long line of fortifications came into existence on the French frontier, the positions and strength of which were regulated with special regard to a new strategic disposi tion of the field armies and to the number and sites of the "strategic railway stations" which were constructed about the same time. Thus, the creation of a new series of forts extending from Thionville (Die denhofen) to Metz and thence south-eastward was coupled with the construction of twelve strategic railway stations between Cologne and the Belgian frontier, and later an immense strategic railway station was undertaken at Saarburg, on the right rear of Thionville and well away from the French frontier, and many important new works both of fortification and of railway construction in Upper Alsace, between Colmar and Basel. In August 1914 the rapid construction of semi permanent works, which helped so materially to defeat the French offensive against the left-centre of the German advance, brought into prominence the value of such works, as did their absence on the other flank which was left open to the German turning movement. After the World War, Germany's 5,5ookm. of land frontier had for the most part no good protection from natural features or barriers. To the west Germany was faced by the powerful French defensive fortifications known as the Maginot Line which was built after the war, and by strengthened defensive works in Belgium. To the south and west Switzerland has a good natural defence in her mountains. On the south the Alps form something of a barrier between Germany and Italy, but railway lines through the Brenner and Semmering passes, and the existence of other passes make the Alpine boundary not insuperable for modern mechanized armies. Mussolini, by rapidly sending Italian troops to the Brenner frontier in 5934, helped to pre vent Hitler from seizing Austria at the time of the Nazi assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss. Since 1936, when Hitler and Mussolini became friends and later formed the "Berlin-Rome Axis," Hitler no longer needed to worry about Germany's southern frontier and could afford to leave it unfortified. Nor were any fortifications needed to the southeast, after the annexation of Austria, against weak and small States like Hungary and Yugoslavia, which are further weakened by internal conflicts between Nazi and anti-Nazi elements. To the east the problem of the frontiers against Poland and Czecho slovakia was more serious. Poland and Germany had been enemies for six centuries with bitter memories on both sides. By the Ver sailles Treaty Germany was deprived of the so-called Polish Corridor, so that East Prussia was cut off from the rest of the Reich and more than half surrounded by Polish territory. Nowhere was the Polish frontier well defined by any rivers, mountains or other good natural barriers. On both sides of the frontier there were discontented minori ties—Poles in Germany, and Germans in Danzig and the Polish Corridor. Germany was permitted by the treaty to retain some pre war fortifications, but these were antiquated and of little value, especially as Poland was in alliance with France. Under the German Republic therefore no effort was made to change the Polish frontiers, aside from the plebiscites provided for in the treaty. Hitler likewise saw that he could do nothing until he had rearmed Germany and fortified his western frontier against France. Therefore, in Jan. 1934, he signed with Pilsudski a ten-year treaty of friendship, by which Poland and Germany agreed not to change their frontiers by force.
Czechoslovakia seemed a great obstacle to Hitler in his plans of pushing to the east, and also something of a potential military danger if he engaged in any war. Czechoslovakia had one of the greatest armament factories in the world, the Skoda works, which were partly controlled by French capital and were in close association with the French Schneider-Creusot armaments concern. She had also defensive alliances with France and Russia. Her territory, well defended by the natural mountain frontier and fortification works, might be an easy landing place for friendly Russian air forces and thus form the spear head of the Communist attack on the Third Reich—at least so the Nazi propaganda proclaimed in trying to justify Hitler's seizure of Bohemia-Moravia in March 1939. By joining this former Austrian territory to Greater Germany, Hitler shortened most advantageously his eastern frontier and took possession of the Czech fortifications built with the aid and advice of French engineers. At the same time he extorted from tiny Slovakia the right to send German armies through her territory and to build German fortifications against Poland along the northern frontier of Slovakia ; and in Aug. 1939, he decreed that the Slovakian Army should place itself under his com mand to be used against Poland in case of war.
Meanwhile, he had decided that before he could destroy Czecho slovakia and attack Poland, he must make an impenetrable barrier in the west which would prevent France from invading Germany in support of France's Polish and Czech allies. The order for the con struction of this "Westwall" was secretly given on May 28, 1938, after Czechoslovakia had taken a somewhat defiant attitude by mobilizing part of her army a week earlier to prevent Hitler from making trouble in the Sudeten districts. The task was given to Dr. Todt, a very able engineer who had proved his genius and energy in constructing Germany's magnificent new auto-highways of concrete cement. He was told that the "Westwall" must be completed by October I. Within the time specified it was practically finished—a line of fortifications stretching from the Belgian to the Swiss frontier. In some places it was as much as 5okm. wide, if the anti-aircraft defences are included. In the triple line of protective works, which included not only gun emplacements but complete living quarters underground for the men, underground connecting railways, and closely set concrete barrier pillars, stupendous amounts of labour and material were employed with an extraordinarily feverish activity. According to official statistics published in July 1939, there were engaged in the work at the end of September nearly 500,000 men. Cement, gravel, steel, and other materials were brought daily in 8,000 railway cars in addition to what was transported by 15,00o trucks and many canal boats. Six million tons of cement—a third of Ger many's total annual production—and 695,00o cubic metres of wood were used. The German engineers pronounced the barrier to be im passable. It contributed to Hitler's success in bluffing France and England into acceptance of the Munich Agreement and the beginning of Czechoslovakia's dismemberment. In the summer of 1939, when Hitler demanded that Danzig should return to the Reich and German Polish relations became tense, Hitler ordered that a film of the "West wall" should be shown in all German theatres and movie-houses to strengthen people's conviction that Germany was invincible in the west. If Poland did not yield to his demands and war came in the east, the German people need have no fear of invasion by the French.
On the other hand, Hitler's annexations of territories between 1935 and 1939, which have been noted above under "Population" in Table I, more than made up for the territorial and population losses which Germany suffered as a result of the World War. The number of separate States forming the Bismarckian Reich was reduced from 26 to 17 by the amalgamation of smaller units, either with each other (Thuringia) or with Prussia and Bavaria. But the feature most characteristic of the German Union, the fact that Prussia is the pre dominant partner, has not been changed. The 18 other units, com prising not only the petty countries but Austria, Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Saxony as well, cover but 312,000 sq.km. with 37,800,000 inhabit ants, 'whilst the remaining partner, Prussia, controls 293,000 sq.km. and 41,700,000 inhabitants. In addition, there is the separately or ganized and governed German "Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia" with 6,000,000 inhabitants, and the "General Government" of Poland with some 15,000,000 inhabitants.
After 1933 Hitler proceeded rapidly to complete the work of Ger man unification. This had begun during the period of the French Revolution and Napoleon I, when some 30o States of the old Holy Roman Empire were consolidated into 69 in 1806, and to 39 in the German Confederation of 1815. Bismarck's annexations of territory to Prussia further reduced the number of States in the German Empire of 1871 to 25. The 17 States comprising the Weimar Republic of 1919 were so reduced in power and functions by Hitler after that his "Third Reich" became virtually a unitary, instead of a federal, form of government. Just as in the French Revolution the power of the old French feudal duchies and counties was swept away and France was made "one and indivisible," with power concentrated in the capital at Paris, so under Hitler the authority of the former German States was obliterated and his Third Reich became one of the most highly centralized and unified States in the world, with power concentrated in the capital at Berlin.
The Reich firmly grasped the financial sovereignty belonging to the States under the Bismarckian constitution. Whilst formerly the Imperial treasury was the pensioner of the States, the process has become inverted: the States, now called Lander, are restricted to such taxes as the Reich has seen fit to turn over to them ; they draw most of their sustenance from the subsidies it is granting to them from proceeds of taxes assigned and collected by its authority. It is not a sound system as different authorities are • responsible for the raising and for the spending of the revenues ; there is a good deal of haggling about the shares. But the very shortcomings of the system drove all parties concerned towards greater unification, some of them conniving at it very much against their will. The Reich built up its own system of tax gathering over its entire area ; it took over the separate financial services which the Lander so far had maintained for the assessment and the collection of taxes left to them for their own independent use. Germany became economically and financially a "united empire," somewhat like England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, whilst formerly she was a kind of union of the United States type.
Germany's great natural assets are her coal mines. She is supposed to possess 8o,000,000,000 metric tons. Coal exists in many districts; the main centres of the industry are, however, the Ruhr district, which is producing about 78% of the total German production, and the Silesian area, especially Upper Silesia. A large part of this area was handed over to Poland under the award of the League of Nations, resulting in a severe dislocation of the coal trade, but this area was reannexed to Germany in Sept. 1939. Many of the German coal seams are comparatively thin, especially in the Ruhr district where working costs are comparatively high. On the other hand their situation close to great natural waterways and to efficient canals is favourable to distribution. Upper Silesia, on the other hand, has been a land of very thick seams, and low working costs, but is rather badly situated for distributive purposes.
Within the last 4o years the exploitation of the huge lignite de posits has been taken up. The available German supply is estimated at 57,000,000,000 metric tons. As lignite is not mined, but rather scraped up by means of huge mechanical excavators, production is not dependent on an adequate supply of skilled miners. The most important of these new lignite areas are close to existing industrial centres. Thus power plants in the lignite area of central Germany are generating the electric power needed in Berlin. Lignite, moreover, has been made the base for the production of synthetic nitrate and can be used as cheap raw material for producing oil. Germany's posi tion as an iron-ore producing country was greatly changed by the Treaty of Versailles. The loss of Lorraine reduced her annual produc tion from 281 million tons in 1913 to 9,000,000 tons in 1937. Having lost her main supplies, she is now but the fifth of the iron-ore pro ducing countries of Europe. However, by the annexation of Austria and by the exploitation of low grade ores in the Salzgitter district in central Germany near Hanover, Germany increased her iron production during the first six months of 1939 to 6,180,000 metric tons.
Apart from iron Germany's mineral wealth is not considerable. There are some spelter, copper, silver, lead and a little tin, and, of course, a good deal of bauxite. On the other hand the world's chief potash deposits are located in Germany. The distribution and esti mated amount of Germany's principal mineral resources are given in Table VII.
The many mountain districts, distributed over many parts of the country, make it fairly easy to use and exploit water power. Southern and south-western Germany, which are far away from the coal areas, are favoured by easy access to water power.
Broadly speaking, apart from coal, Germany is not conspicuous amongst the countries of the world for the possession of natural re sources. Invention and scientific management rather than natural wealth are the mainstays of German economic life. It is not by acci dent that she has become the home of applied chemistry.
There are two main systems of landholding forming the basis of German agriculture, each of them predominating in different parts of the country. The east, especially the country to the right of the Elbe, is a land of big properties ; some tracts like East Prussia and parts of Silesia being in the hands of comparatively few owners. These estates are rarely let to tenants; they are run like home farms under the management of the owners or their administrators by means of hired agricultural labourers. Of the 5,096,534 holdings only 1,373,625 are let to tenants, who farm but 12.4% of the total area used for agricul tural purposes. Since migration to the industrial centres has set in, there is very often a scarcity of labour.
In the west, in the south and in most parts of central Germany the land is mainly held by peasant proprietors. Some of them, especially in the north-west, own fairly large farms, for the working of which they employ hired labour. Others again, especially in the Rhine valley, are small holders, running their farm or plot—some of them very intensively cultivated—with the help of their families. The distribu tion of the total 5,096,534 holdings enumerated is (1925 figures) given in Table VIII.
far more severely than the farmers working medium-sized and small holdings. Much was done, during the 20 years after the war, in Old Germany (including the Saarland but not later annexations) to create new peasant agricultural holdings by reclaiming swamp and other unused lands and by breaking up larger into smaller estates. Much of the land, however, was taken for barracks, airports, auto-highways, and other public purposes. These changes are shown in Table X.
cow in 1937 was 2,521 kilograms. In the decade 1924-27 to it had increased by 670 litres or 37° on small farms, and by 5io litres or 18% on large estates, per cow per year. During however, cattle and dairy production suffered considerably from the hoof-and mouth disease which swept across Germany from the Rhineland to the eastern districts. The livestock and the dairy production in recent years is given in Table XIII.
Since Germany cannot produce at home all the food she needs she has made increasing use of the limitless resources of the sea, catching more sea-fish herself, importing less, and carrying on an active propa ganda for greater consumption of sea-foods in place of meat. These changes are shown in Table XIV.
Of total area of the agricultural holdings above half a hectare in size in Old Germany (41,567,000ha.), about two-thirds (26,7o5,000ha.) were in active use: under tillage, 18,315,3o9ha. ; meadow, 5,049,o67ha. ; and pasture, 2,929,966 hectares.
Germany soon after the Franco-Prussian War, with the rapid in dustrial development, was no longer able to raise enough grain to meet her food and fodder needs. In 1879 a tariff on grains was introduced to stimulate domestic production, but nevertheless Ger many ever since has had to be a grain-importing country. By the use of artificial fertilizers and improved methods, however, she has considerably increased her production of grain and other crops above pre-war levels. The figures for recent years are shown in Table XI.
The areas planted to different crops, and the relatively high kilo gram yields per hectare as compared with Great Britain and the United States in 1937, which was a fair average year for Germany, were, according to the International Agricultural Institute in Rome, as shown in Table XII.
Outside a few grazing districts, mixed farming is the rule. Nearly everywhere cattle must be kept indoors in winter, and in recent years there has been an increasing tendency to keep them indoors through out the year in order to make more land available for raising crops by turning pasture into arable land. This being the case, stall feeding has become everywhere increasingly predominant, aiming at dairy produce rather than at stock-breeding or fattening and sheep farming. The diet of fodder beets and potatoes instead of grass appears to in crease rather than diminish the yield of milk. The average yield per Viticulture is important on the sunny hillsides of the Rhine, the Main, the Neckar, the Moselle, and the Saar. The yield of the vine crop has varied during the past decade between 1,722,00o hectolitres in 1932 and 4,525,00o in 1934. Beer production fell from 58,078,000 hectolitres in 1929 to 33,570,00o in 1932, the year of the deepest depression ; in the following years it rose steadily to hectolitres in 1937. Mainly from the sugar beet, 232 factories pro duced 2,21o,0o0 tons of raw sugar in 1937, enough to supply domestic consumption.
A little more than a quarter of Germany (27.5%) is covered with forests which yield timber as well as material for paper, wood-fibre, cellulose, and numerous artificial substitute ("Ersatz") products. But the wood supply is insufficient for Germany's needs, especially in recent years when she has been cutting wood one-and-a-half times as fast as it grows. The annexation of Austria, where forest covers 37.4% of the area, was a valuable addition to Germany's timber supply ; the same is true in a less degree of the annexations of the Sudetenland and Bohemia-Moravia.
German agriculture was financially in a bad way under the Weimar Republic. Notwithstanding the fact that farmers had practically wiped out their heavy indebtedness during the inflation of 1923, their lands became heavily mortgaged again during the following years at high rates of interest. Agriculture was not a paying business. Prices of agricultural products varied with the movement of the world market ; fluctuations could not be prevented as in the cartellized industries. Industrialists could stabilize prices at a level they considered profitable by a combination of protective duties with a centralized control of the market. Agriculturalists on the other hand had to pay greatly in flated prices for their equipment, whilst they received for their farm products prices by no means adequately raised. Furthermore, the wages of agricultural labourers rose considerably. They varied very greatly in different districts. They amounted in 1926 to about o.48 mark per hour in the Rhineland, but were only o.34 mark in East Prussia.
Under National Socialism great, and on the whole successful, efforts were made to improve and stabilize agricultural conditions. A Reich Food Bureau (Reichsneihrstand) was created under the leadership of the minister of agriculture, Richard Walther Darre. In his books he had emphasized Blut fund Boden—pure Aryan blood and German soil as the backbone of the Third Reich's strength. He tried to please some 600,000 peasant proprietors by making their holdings (Erbhofe), hereditary and inalienable, and by declaring that they formed a "Peasant Nobility." Remembering Germany's painful food shortage during the World War and the post-war blockade, and conscious of her needs in case of a future war, he aimed to make Germany as far as possible self-supporting in the matter of food. His Reich Food Bureau was given very wide powers to help bring this about. Agri cultural prices were rigidly fixed or controlled at levels sufficiently remunerative to the farmer. Prices therefore were no longer subject to the fluctuations of the world market. The profits of the middleman were largely eliminated, because the farmer must deliver his fixed quota of produce directly to the agents of the Food Bureau, which likewise fixed the prices for the consumer. The importation of food from abroad was also controlled by the granting or withholding of foreign exchange for payment, by trade agreements between the Ger man Government and foreign governments, and by the provision that all importers of food must first offer it for sale to the Food Bureau. Darre's Food Bureau also distributed technical information and advice to peasants, called their representatives together once a year in a "Peasant Congress," and encouraged them in the use of labour-saving agricultural machinery and of fertilizers. In 1935 the Government compelled the chemical companies to reduce by 25% the price of artificial fertilizers.
Hitler's annexations of 1938-39 did not greatly alter German agri cultural conditions, since the conditions in Austria, the Sudetenland, and Bohemia-Moravia were much the same as in Old Germany. As far as the food shortage was concerned, the annexations made Greater Germany rather worse off than before, because the new territories were dependent to a larger extent than Germany on imported food. The figures for the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia were not avail able, but the principal agricultural statistics for Austria and the Sudetenland for 1937 are given in Table XV.
More than 41% of the German people are engaged in industry. Though the old handicraft system is by no means extinct, more or less large industrial establishments employ an increasing proportion of the total number of industrial workers. Of the 1,917,793 industrial establishments in 1933, more than nine-tenths were small or handicraft establishments employing five or less persons each, while only one per cent were large industries employing over 5o men each. Yet two fifths of all the industrial workers were concentrated in this one per cent of large industrial plants, as may be seen from the figures in Table XVI.
An elaborate industrial census was taken on May 17, 5939, but its results were not immediately available. But earlier censuses show that in the half century between 1882 and 1933 there were considerable changes in the relative number of persons engaged in different forms of employment. While those in agriculture and forestry increased only very moderately, those in industry more than doubled; those in com merce and transportation more than quadrupled ; those in public services nearly trebled ; while those in domestic service actually de clined. These changes, which are shown in Table XVII, proceeded at an accelerated rate during the six years after 1933.
The after-effects of the war and of the revolution greatly affected German industries. The revolution brought about a different attitude of the working classes. Labour's increased demands not only led to important changes in wages and hours of work ; they greatly lessened the disparity between skilled and unskilled workers and made collective bargaining almost universal. Inflation has reduced the 44 to 5 milliard marks of bonded debt with which industrial concerns were saddled, to less than one milliard, if valorization is taken into account ; —an advantage which was quickly lost when the Dawes plan placed five milliard marks representing an annual charge of 30o million marks, running for 38 years, on industrial concerns with the avowed object of equalizing the cost of production of German industries with those of competing countries.
On the other hand, inflation greatly dislocated the home market, the income of the large class formerly receiving interest on mortgages, debentures and other bonds, having been reduced by at least four fifths. Moreover, the scarcity of capital following inflation cramped industrial reorganization. A contracted home market was not offset by expanding foreign markets. In many oversea countries industriali zation set in to such a degree as to make the importation of manu factured goods more or less superfluous. Whilst Germany was pre cluded from the full enjoyment of the most favoured nations clauses in the former enemy countries, her selling agencies were destroyed permanently in many cases, owing to the expulsion or non-admission of her nationals.
Last, but not least, the Treaty of Versailles greatly dislocated some of the leading German industries, especially the mining industry, the iron and steel industry, the textile industry and, to a lesser degree, the chemical trade.
German statistics group industrial and handicraft establishments under 21 headings. The results of the industrial censuses of 1925 and are given in Table XVIII on the "Distribution and Development of German Industry, In 1925 Germany was starting forward again, after the disrupting effects of the war and inflation, in a great industrial recovery. This continued upward during the next four years when the adoption of the Dawes Plan for Reparations re established German credit and allowed Germany to borrow very heavily abroad. Part of the money borrowed was spent in prompt payment of reparations obligations under the Dawes Plan ; part was spent in public welfare improvements, in accordance with socialistic ideals, such as public parks, libraries, baths, and athletic fields and buildings for the masses ; and a large part of the remaining money borrowed abroad was spent in the "rationalization of industry," that is, in the modernization of old plants and the construction of new ones with the most up-to-date labour-saving machinery. The use of hand-power was increasingly replaced by machine-power. The older forms of horse-power—wind, water, and steam-machines—were in creasingly replaced by electric motor power, so that between 1925 and the former declined 4.7%, and the latter increased 40.7%. The excessive rationalization of industry, or replacement of hand-power by machine-power, affected Germany adversely in two ways. It saddled Germany with an intolerable foreign debt at high rates of interest which.could not be met when the world depression began in 1929. It also tended to increase the terrible unemployment conditions in Germany which were at their worst in 1932. The number of in dustrial employed persons had fallen from 53,000,000 in 1925 to 9,000,000 in 1933, a drop of over 30%. It was this frightful unemploy ment, with industrial depression and financial distress, which afforded the fertile ground in which National Socialism could sow its seeds and pave the way for Hitler's seizure of political power.
In 1933 another great industrial recovery began. It was stimulated by the National Socialist policy of reducing unemployment by spread ing out work at short hours and fixed low wages to as many persons as possible (instead of allowing trade unions to force high wages for the employed while great masses remained unemployed, as in the United States). The National Socialists also reduced unemployment by great Government expenditures on public works like auto-highways, roads, housing and repairs, and better barracks, and after 1935 by gigantic but unpublished Government expenditures on _ rearmament and fortifications. The statistics of this recovery after 1933 in some of the more important industries—coal and iron, chemicals, textiles, motor vehicles, and others—will be indicated in tables below.
By the feverish effort at rearmament had completely wiped out unemployment, and even created a severe labour-shortage, in spite of the 2 2,000,000 then employed. As German exports were in sufficient to pay for all the needed raw materials from abroad, Ger many also began to suffer from a severe shortage of industrial raw materials. As she also wanted to be as far as possible "self-sufficient" in case of a future war and blockade, she developed a policy of "autarchy." Instead of manufacturing goods from imported raw materials she began to manufacture them as far as possible from her own domestic resources. These substitute (Ersatz) products,—gasoline from coal ; textiles from wood-fibre, cellulose, or casein ; artificial rubber or buns ; etc.—required much more labour, capital investment, horse-power and domestic materials such as coal and timber, than goods formerly made from imported raw materials. As a result, the severity of the labour shortage and raw materials shortage was further intensified. By Aug. 1939, when German troops were mobilized on account of the Danzig crisis and tension with Poland, German in dustry was already suffering from overstrain.
Coal mining, Germany's basic industry, lost about 16% of the production capacity of 1913, the ceded part of Upper Silesia having an output of 32,000,000 tons of the total German output of 193,000, 00o tons. Moreover, 13,0o0,000 tons a year from the Saar were no longer available from 1919 to 1935. These losses could not be com pletely overcome even by 1939. The world's coal situation had changed ; lignite had come into great importance, and oil and elec tricity became serious competitors. Coal production increased to 163, 000,000 tons in 1929, sank to io5,0o0,00o in 1932, and then rose again to 184,500,00o in 1937. But there the limit of further increase seemed to be reached; production for 1938 was only slightly above 1937, and only 94,060,00o for the first half of 1939. Two of the difficulties which coal mining encounters are shortage of labour and increasing taxes. Efforts were made in 1938-39 to overcome the first by increas ing the compulsory workday for miners from 8 to 81- hours a day, cutting out all holidays, and paying higher wages and premiums to attract a larger number of young men into the industry ; also by transferring miners from former Czechoslovakia to the Ruhr. But as to the second difficulty, under Nazi rule reduction of taxes was hardly to be looked for. The result is that coal mining has not been a profitable business since strenuous rearmament began, as may be seen from the reports of nine large companies in Table XIX.
Lignite (Braunkohl) production increased rapidly after the war and almost exactly equalled coal production in tons. Compared with coal, lignite has a relatively low caloric content, but it requires far less labour to exploit, since it lies close to the surface and can usually be dug up by giant scoops in open air operations. It is largely used in the form of briquettes in private houses and apartments. It is also largely used for generating energy in electric power plants and in industry generally.
Of Germany's total, coal production in 1937, about io% was used in private house consumption ; another io% was used by railroads and ships ; 8% furnished energy in electric power plants ; 28% was exported; and 34% was used for coking and distillation. The coking process produced coke for smelting iron ore, gas which was piped for hundreds of kilometres, gasoline, coal-tar, dyes and thousands of other derivatives invaluable for the chemical industry and for the manufacture of many "substitute" (Ersatz) products.
Iron and steel, another of Germany's basic industries suffered an even greater dislocation as a result of the war and the cession of Alsace-Lorraine to France. The production of iron ore had been 28,600,00o tons in 1913 ; of this output the districts remaining to Germany produced but 7,300,00o tons—a reduction of 74.5%. This production did not increase at first; in 1932 it even fell to 1,300,000 tons. The number of separate undertakings was reduced from 328 to 115, and the number of people employed from 43,00o to 13,802. Amongst other losses there were 23 concerns with 114 blast furnaces, 21 steel works with 5o Thomas converters, 7o Martin hearths and 30 rolling mills. These works were expropriated by the French Govern ment, the German Government being bound to pay compensation, which was used for the re-erection of new plants in German territory. The former German owners, being in most cases owners of coal and coke in the Ruhr district, could easily start new works on the basis of their ownership of coal, whilst their French successors depended for the profitable running of their newly acquired Lorraine steel works, on coal from the Ruhr and on the market of south-western Germany. When the struggle for the Ruhr was over and when Ger many regained her liberty of tariff legislation, the German iron and steel industries again began to acquire a strong position. By importing iron ore and by the use of scrap, Germany had enough raw material to start again.
After 1933 Germany's iron and steel production recovered rapidly. Her great lack is iron ore to make up for the ores lost in Lorraine. To overcome this lack of domestic iron ore Germany in 1937 imported 2o,60o,00o tons-9,ioo,000 from Sweden, 5,700,00o from France, 1,50o,00o from Belgium and Luxembourg, i,ioo,000 from Spain, 800,00o from Newfoundland, 700,o0o from Algeria, 500,00o from Nor way, and a little from other countries. Her own domestic production of iron ore rose from 2,600,00o tons in 1933 to 9,700,00o tons in The annexation of Austria, which produced 1,800,000 tons in 1937, and of part of Czechoslovakia which produced about i,000,000, were welcome additions to Germany's iron ore supply.
The total of imported and domestic iron ore in 1937 (30,300,000 tons), however, was not enough for Germany's rearmament and other needs. Therefore there was formed, as part of the Four-Year Plan, the Hermann Goering Reich Company for Ore Mining and Iron Smelt ing. By the use of a new acid smelting process discovered by Max Paschke and Eugen Peetz this company is to exploit Germany's low grade ores which lie in the Hanover-Brunswick regions and elsewhere. They have a low iron content of only 14 to 30%, as compared with an average of 60% or more in Swedish ores, and 3o to 40% in Ger man ores already being exploited by private enterprise in Germany. It is estimated that there are i,000,000.000 tons of this low grade ore, but hitherto it had been unprofitable to develop by the old processes, and private enterprise would not touch it. But the Goering company, supplied partly with State funds and partly with private capital which was encouraged to participate, and using the new Paschke-Peetz acid smelting process. was expected to produce i,000,000 tons of crude steel by 1940 in the new plant being erected in the Salzgitter district near Hanover. Inasmuch as the new steel plant was erected on the ore deposits themselves, the necessary coal and coke will have to be transported to it, but this was held to be cheaper than moving the low grade ore to the coal in the Ruhr district. It had also the strategic advantage that, being further from the frontier, it would be less in danger of being bombed in case of war than if concentrated with the other steel plants in the Ruhr. After the annexation of Austria the Goering company began the erection of another iron and steel plant at Linz on the Danube for the more rapid exploitation of Austrian ores.
Some of the principal other industries, besides coal and lignite, and their recent development may be seen in Table XXII.
German business life is highly organized. Joint stock companies and limited liability companies increased in number and importance after the World War.
Organization did not stop at the formation of joint stock companies.
During the days of inflation the concentration of industries in a few hands by all sorts of combines was highly popular. Shrewd business men borrowed money to buy shares and plants, and repaid the loans in valueless paper money. Some of the new combines collapsed when credit became dear. Others chose the so-called "vertical" combination, trying to concentrate in one hand works representing the different stages of production. For some time the "integral" combination be came the industrial ideal. It was a self-sufficient industrial unit, which raised its own raw material and distributed its own finished produce by its own selling agency, after having sent the raw material through all manufacturing stages, in works under control of the management. The scarcity of credit which followed the stabilization of the mark dealt unkindly with these undertakings, but many survived. It has been estimated that of the 12,000 joint stock companies existing Oct. 31, 1927, 2,100 were controlled by such concerns, whilst the nominal capital invested in these 2,100 undertakings was estimated to be about three-fifths of the nominal capital of the existing joint stock companies: The relation between the companies was sometimes maintained by means of a holding company, in other cases interlocking directorates were supposed to be sufficient.
The other form of combination, the "horizontal" combine, the object of which is to unite all works producing similar goods in some sort of union with the object of controlling prices, is more firmly established than ever. Some of these combines, popularly called "cartels," do not go farther than to standardize contracts, conditions of payment and so on; others distribute the markets—at home or abroad, by more or less loose agreements ; others again—they are mostly called syndicates—created central selling agencies, which fix a uniform price and regulate the output of the participating members with a view to maximum profits for the industry in the long run.
Most of the basic industries, coal, lignite, pig iron, steel making, potash mining and many others, adopted this highly centralized organ ization, securing a kind of co-operative monopoly for their members. By raising prices above the competitive rates they succeeded in keep ing unprofitable works going at a profit charged to the home con sumer ; but they tried at the same time to eradicate them either by buying their quota or by forcing technical progress and business efficiency upon them through a kind of compulsory education. The available surplus which could not be disposed of at monopolistic prices at home was sold abroad at competitive prices, thus providing foreign countries with half finished produce or raw material at a cheaper rate than the German manufacturers.
In some cases, the producer of finished goods was compensated by a kind of drawback, to enable him to meet his foreign competitors on equal terms.
In a few cases organization went beyond the "cartel" stage and a real trust was formed, when all the enterprises concerned were com pletely fused. This was done in steel-making by the fusion of big steel works, and, more completely, in the chemical industry, where, in some branches at least, there is a kind of natural monopoly. The trust is a far more efficient form of organization than the cartel, if its stock has not been watered at formation, as it need not pay any regard to backward concerns. It has not succeeded in getting real control of the industry in most cases. Even the steel trust is but an extremely powerful unit of the steel cartels.
It has been estimated that there were in 1928 about 3,000 of such cartels, some extremely weak, while again, others were strong enough not only to run their own affairs but to wield a decisive influence on the fate of their customers. There was a change visible in the attitude of the Government, which acted firmly when powerful combines tried to raise prices.
The complete breakdown of government and government finance during the last phase of the inflation period in 1923 practically ended all schemes for nationalization. The existing government and mu nicipal works like the government railways and municipal tram ways did not pay, as it was impossible to raise the rates of public utilities as quickly as the depreciation of the currency de manded. Government undertakings seemed doomed; even where they had existed for a long time they were organized as private companies, the shares of which were held by the government or the municipality. All the mining interests of the Prussian government, for example, were detached from the general administration and put into a separate company, owned by the Prussian State. Technical developments, in some ways, worked in the same direction. Of 45 cities with more than 1oo,000 inhabitants but five by 1926 depended entirely on electrical power generated in their own municipal plants; 20 others got their main supply from their own works, whilst 20 others got it entirely or mainly from other concerns. There were 42 cities that drew 58.6% (1.783 million kw.) from their own plants. Whilst municipalization and nationalization had received a setback in these directions, the credit stringency following the stabilization of the mark forced the government into many enterprises. At times govern ment was the only agency possessing cash. Industrial concerns in difficulties asked for State loans and subsidies and in this way the government became their silent partner when faith in government enterprise had completely gone.
.—German Government Holdings of Companies (1927) I. Holdings of the Reich (1) Vereinigte Industrie Aktiengesellschaft, called "Viag." This is a hold ing company embracing banks, electrical undertakings, aluminium works, nitrate works, engineering shops, etc., totalling Marks 208, 200,000 (2) Holdings of different departments: (a) Home Office: publishing, wireless, etc. 90,00o (b) Labour Office: building companies, etc 536,000 (c) Food Ministry: grain company, etc 21,000,000 (d) Transportation Ministry 6,000,000 (e) Ministry of Finance 58,800,000 II. Holdings of the States Prussia: (a) Preussag (holding company for mines) . . . . . . 4,500,000 (b) Electrical concerns: Majority in six companies Participation in seven companies Totalling over 53,000,00o During the years 2924-29 German industries were completely over hauled. American experience and American capital were drawn upon freely to rationalize German industry and to bring about greater efficiency. Results were excellent from a technical point of view, but not an unqualified economic success. In 1937 joint stock companies numbering 3,00o and having a capital of 17 milliard marks, had debts amounting to 35 milliard marks. Average dividends were but 4.7%.
Prussia nationalized her railways in 1876-79, other German States have followed suit. Before the war nearly all German railways were State-owned ; there were but a few hundred kilometres in private hands when the Reich took over the railways from the States in 1919 by paying them 39.5 milliard marks (inflated) money, besides taking over the debts incurred by the States when building or acquiring railways. Notwithstanding this excellent bargain, the newly unified railways did not pay. The wear and tear of the war, the struggle for the Ruhr, the havoc of inflation, saddled them with heavy deficits, although formerly the Prussian railways contributed handsomely to the expense of the State. Under the Lon don agreement which embodied the main features of the Dawes plan, the German railways were reorganized. A company, called Deutsche Reichseisenbahngesellschaft, was formed, with a capital of 11 milliard gold marks in ordinary shares and three milliard gold marks in pref erence shares. The ordinary shares remained the property of the Reich. The preference shares (divided between the Reich and the company) were to be sold to the public, when the need for cash arose; up to 1928, 481 million gold marks had been sold. Debenture bonds to the value of 11 milliard gold marks bearing 5% interest and 1% sinking fund were issued and handed over to the Reparation Commission, the annuity of 66o million gold marks attached to their service being a substantial part of the obligations payable under the Dawes plan.
Since this reorganization the German railways have done well. They have earned the income on the bonds issued and the dividend due on the preference shares sold. They have not yet earned a divi Commerce.—German commerce was paralyzed by the World War. Abroad the blockade cut short its activities, at home the control of food and of other necessities greatly reduced its sphere of usefulness. The loss of the German colonies, the confiscation of German property and the expulsion and non-admission of German traders from many countries, prevented a quick recovery.
At home, government control of economic life was continued after the war in many spheres, as inflation made it impossible to re-establish the free play of natural economic forces. The fixing of prices in a quickly deteriorating currency not only hampered free movements. As there were no means of maintaining the value of liquid capital, traders invested either in commodities, often on a speculative basis, or in industrial assets or in foreign currencies. When stabilization set in, Germany had become an empty shell. Whilst industrialists and agriculturists had saved parts of their fortunes by putting them into plants, the merchant class as a whole was practically bankrupt. They and the investing public had borne the brunt of the catastrophe. There always had been a tendency amongst German industrialists to set up selling agencies of their own. This tendency was greatly strengthened by the reduced financial capacity of the merchants and by the growth of cartels and organized concerns. In pre-war days these tendencies were greatly facilitated by the industrial policy of the German banks. As the banks were often the promoters as well as the partners (by holding shares) of industrial concerns, the ties connect ing banking and industry were very close. The merchant as a financier could easily be dispensed with, when the big joint stock banks were willing not only to finance the goods produced but to take up shares with the object of selling them to the public after the concern was properly nursed. Relations between banks and industrial companies were very close ; there was a successive interchange of directors to sit on the respective boards. In times of great industrial prosperity the influence of the manufacturers on the banks was enormous ; they be came sometimes nearly independent of their support and influenced their policy by being their most important "depositors." In times of stringency, on the other hand, the banks regained control.
Inflation nearly ruined the banks. They realized far too late the wisdom the industrialists had very early exhibited: that inflation is the borrowers' heaven and the creditors' hell. The assets of all joint stock banks which had amounted to nearly 18 milliard gold marks on Dec. 31, 1913, had fallen to 3.5 milliard gold marks on Jan. 1, At the same dates the assets of the mortgage banks had fallen from 13.5 milliard gold marks to a little over one-half a milliard gold marks. Since then there has been a quick recovery. But the total share capital of all joint stock banks, which was a little over four milliard marks (without reserves), has not yet grown to three milliard marks.
the World War Germany had the gold stand ard. The notes of the Reichsbank were legal tender ; they were cov ered to one-third by a gold reserve, whilst the remaining two-thirds were secured by bills of exchange conforming to certain standards. The country's total circulation was estimated at about 6 milliard marks. During the war the bank was authorized to issue notes against treasury bills. As a result of this overissue of notes the mark depre ciated until in July 1923 during the struggle for the Ruhr the amount of treasury bills outstanding was 57.8 milliard marks and the total note issue 43.6 milliard marks. In Dec. 1923 the bank's available gold re serves, which had stood at about one milliard marks a year earlier, had fallen to 467 million marks. The value of the gold mark had risen to one milliard of paper marks. By midsummer 1923 the mark as medium of circulation was doomed. An emergency currency such as "gold certificates" was suggested. To stave off the crisis, whilst currency discussion went on, taxation was put on a gold basis ; for the first time for many years the landed interest had to bear its share. The Reichsbank, which had not been willing to risk its gold in 1922 when there was a fair chance of success, had thrown away half of its holdings in the hopeless endeavour to raise the course of the mark at a time when the minting of marks proceeded at fantastic speed. A foreign loan, to ensure success, could not be had ; a home loan, it was supposed, was out of the question.
A plan for the issue of a new money, to be guaranteed by mortgage bonds, funded on real estate, was broached. These notes—they were later called the rentenmark—were to be secured by interest-bearing bonds ; they could be automatically converted into them. The interest was to be a first charge on real estate. The total issue of the new money was to be limited to 4.2 milliards, 2.3 milliards of which were to be Ient to the government ; the rest to private concerns. The plan which was to provide the government with funds to carry on the struggle in the Ruhr would have failed lamentably if the Stresemann government had not had the courage to stop the fight, thus doing away with the main cause for unlimited expenditure. It cut down the total issue to 2.3 milliards and greatly modified the whole scheme. The government succeeded, against all expectations, in floating a gold loan, which gave it a breathing space; it was echeloned in such small points that it could be used as stable currency during the period of transition. When Luther became chancellor of the exchequer the new currency, the rentenmark, was issued, and the work of stabilization began. It succeeded completely.
A little later the Reichsbank was reorganized according to the Dawes plan. Its capital was fixed at 300,000,00o marks, 120,000,000 marks more than the capital of the old bank. Of the 300,000,000 marks capital only 177,000,000 were at first called. Part of the capital shares were handed over to foreigners, and the Reparations Com mission was given certain control over the management of the Reichs bank. After 1930 this foreign control was done away with, and in 1939 all foreign holders of Reichsbank shares were forced to surrender them and given compensation of a sort. Before the war, and by the reorganization of 1924, the Reichsbank was required to cover its issue of paper money by a gold reserve of at least 40%. This was considered the minimum for financial safety. This requirement was abandoned after 193o. By the gold had so largely disappeared and the paper money had so enormously increased, as a convenient method of finding money for rearmament and other Nazi expendi tures, that the gold reserve sank to less than i% of the note circula tion. The Reichsbank was also formerly independent of the political control of the Reich Government, being under the management of an independent board of directors. Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank for more than a dozen years, was a very able finan cier. In spite of some very questionable methods he still enjoyed some confidence among foreign bankers, but he was never popular with the Nazis, especially with the more radical members of the Nazi Party. When he was forced, in Nov. 1937, to retire as president of the Reichs bank, the bank lost whatever was left of its independent position. By a decree of June it was placed directly under the control of Hitler, who exercised his control through Dr. Walther Funk, who held the double position of Reich economics minister and president of the Reichsbank. Its unsound financial condition in 1939 as compared with a decade earlier may be seen by a comparison of the principal items of two of the bank's weekly statements.
State governments, government departments, provinces and munici palities were accustomed to charter banks of their own with the object of doing their own business, independently of the Reichsbank and the private banks. These public banks did not issue notes. Though their capital was but a third of that of the big Berlin banks much competition took place between them and the private joint stock banks. Moreover, the savings banks tried to enlarge their activities. The saving banks, like all other institutions dealing with liquid money, were almost cleared out by 1924. Deposits in the savings banks had fallen from 19 milliard marks (1914) to 5.25 milliard marks (1924) . Since then savings have grown considerably, reaching 4.665 milliard marks by the end of 1927, and 15.7 milliard marks in 5937.
The vicissitudes of Germany's economic fate since the World War years are expressed in her foreign trade, and they show wide fluctua tions.
Germany before the war had an unfavourable balance of commerce which was compensated by German shipping, by services of German banks and insurance companies and especially by German invest ments abroad. These investments were variously estimated between 20 and 25 milliard marks. For the decade 1914-24 no satisfactory figures for German foreign trade are available. During the years of the Dawes Plan from 1924 to 5929 German imports greatly exceeded exports, because Germany was buying raw materials and equipment to replenish her diminished stocks and to rationalize her industries ; these imports were largely paid for with money borrowed abroad. From 1929 to 1933 foreign loans ceased; Germany with her replen ished raw materials and her up-to-date machinery was able to export much more than she imported in spite of the world depression. After 1933 the balance of trade again became increasingly unfavourable to Germany. This was owing to many causes. The Nazi persecution of the Jews led to a boycott of German goods in foreign countries. The Nazi efforts at "autarchy," that is, to make Germany as far as pos sible self-sufficing in case of war or blockade; her dwindling supply of gold; her gradual loss of the Russian market owing to her violent anti-Communist propaganda—all these factors caused Germany to introduce a great variety of trade and foreign exchange controls which further throttled German foreign trade. With some countries Ger many established barter agreements, "clearing agreements," and other trade arrangements; these, however, usually resulted in partial failure and in growing resentment in the countries with whom the agreements were made, as these countries gradually realized that they were dis advantageous to themselves. These fluctuations in German foreign trade during the past 6o years are outlined in Table XXVII.
As Germany depends for foodstuffs and most of her raw material on supplies from abroad, she has to export finished goods. Most of her exports in that line are goods which can be produced elsewhere. Outside potash and a few chemicals she does not export non-competi tive goods. Most of the chief exports depend on previous imports.
German exports really amount to a finishing goods industry on a huge scale ; an industry working on a fairly narrow margin. As Herr Hitler tersely stated to the Reichstag on the sixth anniversary of his accession to power on Jan. 30, 1939: "Germany must export or die." Germany needed to import raw materials for her armaments and ex porting industries as well as food for her people, but these imports could be paid for only by increased exports. Herr Hitler could of course have easily increased the much-needed food imports if he had been willing to cut down on the imports for manufacturing arma ments. But he was emphatic in declaring that "it is the supreme task of the National Socialist leadership to do absolutely everything that is humanly possible toward strengthening our armaments." It was the policy summed up in the Nazi slogan: "Cannon rather than butter." The relative importance of the principal groups of goods compris ing Germany's imports and exports remained fairly constant through out all the vicissitudes through which the country passed after in spite of great changes in the total volume of goods imported and in these last years were the smaller States in Southeastern Europe Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. The commercial pres sure which Germany was able to exert upon them was considerably increased by her annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakian territory in 1938 and 1939. Some of the changes in the direction of German trade in the past quarter of a century are seen in Table XXXII.
While the relative importance of the various items of German im ports arid exports remained fairly stable, the direction of German trade chai_ged greatly as a result of the World War and other post war factors. Before the World War nearly one-fourth of Germany's total trade was with Great Britain and the United States. After the war the trade with both steadily declined, until in 1937 it was scarcely more than one-tenth of Germany's total foreign trade. Ger many's exports to Russia, following the years of Germany's great economic recovery during the Dawes Plan, at a time when Russia was developing her resources with imported machinery during the first Five-Year Plan, increased to more than a tenth of Germany's total exports in 1932. But these soon declined again sharply owing to the political antagonism between the National Socialist and Bolshevist regimes. The large increase of German exports to the Netherlands after the war was partly for re-sale by the Dutch to small overseas countries, before Germany had rebuilt her own merchant marine and carrying trade to replace the vessels which she had to surrender to the Allies by the Treaty of Versailles.
Germany's loss of trade with Great Britain and the United States, caused in part by the tariffs, currency changes, and strong bargaining position of these countries, and in part by Germany's own restrictions of foreign exchange, tariffs, and "clearing agreements," was partly made up by increased German exports to South American and other smaller countries which were willing to accept Germany's trade stipulations; these trade stipulations, however, were often far from being wholly advantageous to the smaller countries, and usually ended in causing resentment in them and in a consequent decline in German exports to them in the years 5937 to 1939. Furthermore, in South America, the United States was growing as a successful competitor.
The countries in which Germany's trade increased most successfully Of the total population of 62.5 million people living in Germany on June 15, 5.7 millions exercised no calling. Of the remaining 56.7 millions 32 millions were engaged in some gainful occupation ; whilst the remaining 28.7 millions depended on these breadwinners, another 900,000 were attached to them as domestic servants. Of these 56.7 millions 13 millions-5.5 million breadwinners-were heads of busi nesses, proprietors, tenants, managers, etc. More than io millions- 5.3 million breadwinners-were employees (clerks, gangleaders, fore men and so on) ; 26.6 millions-14.4 million breadwinners-were labourers of all sorts. Another 5.6 millions were members of the family helping in the work ; nearly a million and a half consisted of non-attached domestic helpers.
Of 14.4 million people depending on agriculture, 2.2 million bread winners were "heads" ; of 26 million people depending on industry 1.8 million breadwinners were masters or managers; of 10.6 million breadwinners engaged in commerce 1.2 millions were in this position. The percentage of people in a position of economic independence or responsibility of some sort or other, varied between one-sixth and one-fifth of the numbers counted.
Amongst the breadwinners in agriculture the number of labourers (2.6 millions) was little more than the number of heads (2.2 millions) ; but in this case 4.8 millions of family helpers-largely female-swelled the numbers of the employed class. In industry 1.8 million heads were confronted by over 11 million employees of some sort, very nearly two millions being women. With few exceptions the modern system of working for a wage spread all over Germany. Over seven million people worked in shops with more than ten workers each and subject to factory legislation.
In the spring of 1933, soon after the National Socialists came to power, all the trade unions were crushed. Many of their leaders were arrested and thrown into prison or concentration camps, or managed to escape into exile. The large trade union funds were confiscated and were supposed to be turned over to use of the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront or "DAF"). This so-called labour organiza tion, run by the National Socialist leader, Dr. Robert Ley, was henceforth the only labour organization which was tolerated. Vir tually all workers joined it, because it was practically impossible to get a job or hold one without such membership. Later, the Labour Front even swallowed up all the employer associations, on the gen eral principle that all persons, employers and employees alike, be longed to a single community, which was to be guided by the slogan: "The common good before the individual good." The hours of labour, factory conditions, and all similar matters were regulated after 1933 by the 13 (later 17) all-powerful Trustees of Labour appointed by the Reich minister of economics. Since em ployers and employees could have only the one common aim—the welfare of the German community—there could be no strikes and no lock-outs. In every business of 50 or more employees, the "employer leader" nominated from his "worker-followers" a committee or shop council. This nominated committee was then elected by the employees to confer with the employer and look after the interests of the work ers. If the workers did not like the list of men nominated, they could reject it and call for other nominations. Any disputes were ultimately settled by the authority of the regional Trustee of Labour. In gen eral, wages remained fixed as they were in 1933. But the Trustee of Labour had authority in special circumstances to raise or lower them. He could also forbid employers to dismiss employees. In 1937 and thereafter, when unemployment began to end and to be replaced by a labour shortage under the pressure of work for rearmament, labourers were forbidden to leave one job and take another without the consent of the authorities.
The German Labour Front, which collects considerable fees from its members, did a great deal to try to make life brighter and happier for the German workingman and his family. It created a dozen sub sidiary organizations to provide him with better library facilities, to give him tickets to concerts, plays, and movies at reduced rates, and to advise him on the healthy and refreshing use of his leisure time. One of the most active of these organizations was "Strength Through Joy" (Kraft durch Freude) . It sent scores of thousands annually from the great cities and industrial areas on a two weeks' holiday trip at very low cost to the mountains, to the seashore, or on sea trips on fine large new steamers along the Norwegian waters or in the Mediterranean. Another organization was "Beauty of Work" (Schon heit der Arbeit) . It interested workers in brightening up and im proving life at the factory by getting flowers planted in the yards and driveways, and by getting better dressing rooms, shower-baths, rest rooms, lunch rooms, and other comforts installed for the worker.
For the further advantage of the worker the National Socialists created industrial "Courts of Honour." Here might be brought any cases in which it was charged that either the employer or the worker had acted contrary to the dictates of human brotherhood and German honour. An employer who improperly mistreated one of his workers might be suspended from the management of the business which belonged to him, or even be deprived of it altogether.
The consumers' co-operative movement had an even more phenom enal development. From 1914 to 1925 consumers' co-operative so cieties grew from 2,416 with 1.8 million members to 2,474 with 3.2 million members. Employers, in their turn, were equally well organized. There were at least 1,61 i employers' associations covering the whole Reich, to which must be added a few hundred associations limited to individual countries or districts. This broadly-spread system of organization made collective bargaining fairly easy when the revolu tion had demonstrated the power of the organized working class. Before the war (1914) only one and a half million of workers enjoyed the benefits of collective bargaining. On Jan. 1, 1926, 7,533 separate agreements, binding 788,755 different establishments, were in force ; 11,140,511 million workers were included in them.
The Ruhr crisis and stabilization put an end to all that. Trade unions reported that 13.5% of their members were out of work on an average in 1924, against 2.8% and 1.5% for 1921 and 1922 ; 15.3 were working short time against 5.4 and 2.8%. The situation improved in 1925 when the percentage of totally unemployed fell to 7.1%; but it rose again to 18.3% 1926 and to 13.6% 1927. It has been estimated that the total number of unemployed, including short time workers, was as follows: Jan. 1, 1927 2,350,000 Dec. 1, 1927 1,049,000 Jan. 1, 1928 1,763,000 The great reduction in 1927 was, no doubt, due largely to the spending of loans foreign as well as domestic in the reorganization of industries. By the middle of 1926 2.8% of the resident population were on relief ; by the end of 1927 this had fallen to 1.3%.
Originally the local authorities were charged with the relief for the unemployed, the central authorities coming to their aid. Later on a programme of productive works was entered upon, on which at certain times over 150,00o people were kept busy. A regular system of insurance was introduced, employers and employees contributing up to 3% of basic wages.
After 1929 unemployment conditions again grew rapidly worse. No more capital could be borrowed abroad. The improved labour saving machinery which had been introduced tended to limit the number of workers who could be employed. Worst of all, the general world economic depression which set in affected Germany as well as other countries very seriously. As a result, unemployment increased rapidly, so that in Feb. 1932, no less than 6,128,429 persons were on the rolls of the unemployed. This meant that one-third of Germany's wage earners were on a pitifully small relief or in serious distress. From the summer of 1932 a slight improvement began.
It was one of Chancellor Hitler's greatest achievements that he reduced this very serious unemployment more rapidly than was done in any other large industrial country. Under his direction the Third Reich undertook extensive public works ; spread out work for as many workers as possible by shortening hours of those who worked; and withdrew women from industry in order to make places for heads of families. After he began his active rearmament program in unemployment was further reduced by drawing off some young men from the labour market by putting them at two years' service in the armed forces. Others found employment in working in the iron and steel plants making munitions, in the textile factories making uniforms, and in all the other industries which were created or stimulated to make things which would be used directly or indirectly by the armed forces and the new fortifications. As a result, by 1938 unemployment had almost disappeared. The few thousands still counted as unem ployed were in most cases persons who were only temporarily unem ployed because they were moving from one occupation to another, or persons who had been so long unemployed that they had lost their skill and should really be classed as unemployable rather than unem ployed.