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The
Four-Year Plan was the Nazis’ economic program to prepare Germany
for war. Adolf Hitler personally wrote the memorandum for the plan
in August 1936. In this, this intervention in economic policy,
Hitler personally set forth the goals of the upcoming war and
stipulated a timetable for intensified rearmament. The goals were
twofold: to give the Wehrmacht operational capabilities within four
years; and to enable the German economy to cope with wartime
conditions. To attain these goals, the plan called for the creation
of a command economy with special emphasis on protecting German
agriculture under war conditions, so that it could withstand a
blockade to the limits of its ability. Autarchy would be achieved
through the adoption of an expansionist policy that would render
Germany less dependent on imported raw materials. For this purpose,
the Hermann Goering Reich Works were founded, and refineries and
aluminum plants were established. The plan also promoted the
development of a synthetic-materials industry, in order to replace
raw materials and control of the allocation of labor. Hermann
Goering was nominated as commissioner for the implementation of the
plan and was given extraordinary general powers in the economic
sphere. During the war, these powers were extended to the economic
structure of the occupied countries, so as to extract everything
possible from them in a policy of ruthless plundering. Goering also
directed the deportation of millions of people from the occupied
territories to forced-labor camps.
Germany’s
economic reinvigoration had a direct effect on the potential for
speeding up the Reich’s antisemitic policy.
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