Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY 657founded, the birth rate increased; and these new families entering thelife of the nation gave whole branches of industry, from the buildingtrades to furniture manufacture to textiles, increased employment, not tomention the jobs which the young wives vacated or never required.Much has been said about National Socialist hostility toward femalelabor. In reality, women did not have to relinquish their jobs in industryto any appreciable degree; although of the new jobs that were beingmade and distributed, they did receive fewer than the men. Between1933 and 1936, women's share in industrial employment sank from 293to 24.7 per cent. But the number of industrial workers rose in the sameperiod from 4,100,000 to 6,100,000; in other words, the percentage ofwomen among the employed fell, but their absolute number rose by onequarter — all this at a time when there was as yet no question of a totalmobilization of the German people for war production, rather anartificial mobilization of production for the unemployed.Adolf Hitler, the architect and builder, erected palatial buildings forhis party in Munich, and everywhere in Germany his lieutenants beganto beautify their cities, to tear down old buildings and erect splendidnew facades. A few years later, in faithful imitation of Napoleon III, theregime leveled whole sections of Berlin to make room for mightytemples of the new deified state; the religion of greatness put bread intothe mouths of the wrecking crews.This battle of labor was not yet the battle of rearmament as manybelieved. In 1933, there was no sign of stripping off peacetime luxury,of renouncing superfluous comforts for the sake of military necessities,of saving materials and labor power for weapons and war supplies —despite the scarcity of raw materials. Instead of this, a public demandfor luxuries was almost forcibly encouraged; theaters, museums,monuments were erected, merely to find employment for jobless hands.Almost half of the potential of Germany's industry lay unused whenHitler came to power. The Reich Bureau of Statistics, using 1928 as anorm, estimated that in 1932 average production had fallen to 58.7 (andfor a time lower). And even in 1928, German productive power had notbeen exploited to capacity, for in this year there