In the early summer of 1931, as the storm centre of the century's worst depression roared back towards a Germany where already 4.5 million people were out of work, the Nazi Party for the first time faced the fact that it might be elected to government. 'Finance capitalism', which they had been lambasting for 12 years, had got the country into just the mess they had predicted. How to get out of it? In two years two million jobs had been lost. Promising to 'do something about unemployment' - to use the stirring language of Her Majesty's Opposition - was an electoral necessity for all parties. Genuinely doing something about it was a real necessity for Hitler and the Nazis if they were to attain their first goals of getting power and restoring moral confidence to the nation.

LRB 23 January 1986 | PDF Download