Garage: Mobility and Modernisation

In their propaganda the National Socialists (Nazis) promised work and bread. When they took over power, they had to follow words with deeds. Spectacular projects provided full employment: constructing the Autobahnen (motorways), building Party offices, airfields, public utilities and defence lines, like the Siegried Line in the west. Farmland was cultivated in a grand style by the labour service.  Vehicle tax was abolished in order to promote mobility and support the automobile industry. However, behind all the political-economic measures there was one hidden goal, to arm Germany for war. Moreover, the country had to become independent of imports of all kinds, so that a world-wide war of conquest could be prosecuted from German soil.

In August 1936 Hitler declared in a secret memorandum:
"The scale and speed of the military utilization of our forces cannot be decided too soon,. … if we cannot succeed in making the German Army the first and foremost in the world in the shortest possible time, in training, the positioning of formations, in armaments and above all in their mental training, then Germany will be lost. … We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves on the basis of our own land. … The final solution lies in the extension of our lebensraum … our people. … I hereby set the following task: I. The German Army must be ready for deployment in four years. II. The German economy must be capable of supporting war in four years."
(Michalka, Wolfgang [Hrsg.], Das dritte Reich, Bd.1, München 1985, S.188f.)

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