Was preparing for war the main reasons for Hitlers economic policies

There were variety of economic policies Hitler created for many motives. The main aim for his economic policies was to make Germany a strong military nation. He believed that preparing for war would stop all the suffering due to the poor German economic and would remove any opposition groups. However the setup of DAF (German Labour Front) was also very important.

The most important reason for Hitler’s economic policies was Nazi policy towards workers. This was when Hitler believed that powerful trade union were a threat to the German economy so therefore in 1933 banned trade unions. Hitler than set up the DAF, which had a key role to ensure the workers served the best interest of the Nazi regime. The DAF also controlled the power of the employer. Even through the workers lost their rights to act collectively against their employers, but DAF established the minimum working standards should be, which prevented strikes to be happening. This links to the Nazis policy toward unemployment.

Similarly to Nazi policy to towards workers Hitler set up another programme to tackle the issue of unemployment because majority of unemployed people were communist supporters. Therefore in 1933 the same year DAF was set up he decided to set up RAD (National Labour Service). This provided manual work for unemployed people. It started off as a voluntary scheme, but from 1935 it became compulsory for young men to serve RAD for six months. This was important because it reduced unemployment and taught men in RAD about military work because they were organised along the lines of an army. The workers wore uniforms, lived in camps and did military drills. This can be linked to Nazi policy towards youths.

The Nazi policy towards youth was different for boys and girls because the Nazis believed that both genders have different roles to perform. I’ve mentioned that young men were expected to do six months of military services in RAD that making it one of the Hitler’s Youth activities for boys. The other activities was shooting and map reading so that the boys are preparing to be future members of the armed forces. The girls had completely different roles to boys because the Nazis believed that women’s were expected to be housewives and looking after the future Aryan race because of the thousand year Reich. This was important because youths were going fulfil the Nazi thousand year Reich and rebuild Germany in being a strong military nation. This links to the most important reason which is the rearmament.

The Nazi’s believed that the German race needed Lebensraum, which was living outside its existing borders. These views needed military power in order to fulfil it. The Nazi view towards German economy was similarly organised the same way as the Nazi organised the youth, which was to make it a strong military nation. In 1936 Hitler organised a meeting so that he could declare Germany needs to be ready for the wage of war. This is important reason because a country depended on the army strength to abolish opposition and gather more land.

Overall Hitler banning unions and reducing unemployment helped to abolish political opposition and had social benefits because it protected workers right and lessened unemployment for the German society. The Hitler’s youth helped guide the youth to the Nazi views in life. However, funding for the public work and rearmament isn’t cheap so to have enough money and employment the Nazi removed Jews and women’s from jobs and expanded organisation like the SS and Gestapo.