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

662 DER FUEHRERstood nothing of politics, but that the purely technical handling of armscould be put into no better hands. Therefore, the Labor Service was tolabor; it performed those gigantic works which no one else performedbecause they held out no promise of profit. Woods were cleared andleveled for farm land, dikes built, marshes drained, dry land irrigated.When, with the passing years, normal economic life demanded moreand more labor, the Labor Service lost its importance as a haven for theunemployed; and in time it was overshadowed by the troop organizedby Doctor Karl Todt, which first built the new motor highways and laterthe 'West Wall.' The construction of highways began in September,1933, with some thirty thousand workers, increasing in the next years toan average of seventy thousand; of a projected network ofapproximately seventy-three hundred miles of four-lane highway, aboutone quarter was opened to traffic by the end of 1938.On May 31 (while Hugenberg was still Minister of Economics), theReich government had decided to issue a billion in so-called 'workdrafts' (Arbeits-Schatzanweisungen)', these were negotiable certificatespaid out to employers who undertook projects of 'replacement,' or'maintenance projects.' Anyone who equipped a factory with newmachines or who merely had his house repainted could finance hisoperations with these work drafts, and his taxes were even remitted;Fritz Thyssen declared his intention of opening two new shafts in hiscoal mines — while the coal still lay unsalable on the sidings. All in all,the public treasury poured out approximately three billion marks fromvarious sources (railways, postal service, unemployment insurance) forprojects which, according to the view hitherto prevailing in those timesof crisis, were senseless or at least unnecessary — at any rate, gavepromise of no yield; the expenditures of the Reichswehr are notincluded in this sum. The ideal of rational operation, through which theGerman economic machine had been raised to such high efficiencybetween 1924 and 1929, was abandoned; in many industries — thoughthis was never made official — the government limited the workingweek to forty hours, in order to distribute the available work amongmore hands; in some industries, as in cigar or botde manufacture, a lawprohibited the use of machines in order to provide work for more