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

CHANCELLOR AT LAST 513for spending a billion, and for the present only half a billion was allottedfor re-employment.While the laws of economic reason were bringing about slow andhesitant upswinging, the elements played a strange trick on the Germaneconomy: a mild winter and an abundant harvest. The mild winter was ahard blow to coal-mining, a branch of industry which had long beenstruggling against a sick domestic market. Doctor Paul Silverberg,chairman of the Rhenish Board of Industry and Commerce, himself acoal man, spoke at the beginning of January with great confidence ofthe economic revival in the Rhine-land: ' . . . Indubitably a better moodand increased confidence have made their appearance. More and morevoices in industry and economic life are speaking of increasingemployment and a growing market. . . . The iron industry can register animprovement; the domestic market is reviving somewhat and theforeign market is also becoming steadier. The same is true of themachine and textile industries. . . .' There was only one dark spot in thepicture: the coal business, said Silverberg, 'in consequence of the mildwinter, has not kept step.'At the same time German agriculture groaned beneath the weight of amammoth harvest such as Germany had not witnessed for decades. Amockery of Fate in this winter of starvation! A surplus of grain, ofpotatoes, even of meat, milk and butter — and on the other side,unemployed people without money, insufficient demand, crashingprices. For half a century Germany's military leaders had been insistingthat the country must be in a position to feed itself like a 'besiegedfortress,' without imports. Now Germany's peasants and big landownershad achieved this historic feat for the first time, and they were pale withfear. 'After decades of bitter struggle,' said Baron von Braun, theMinister of Food Supply, 'German agriculture has succeeded in meetingits own breadstuff requirements, an idea which formerly would havebeen regarded as utterly Utopian. Likewise in meat production,increases have been achieved which would formerly have beenconsidered impossible.' To a country with more than its share ofstarvation, the minister spoke of this blessing as of some devastatingenemy army that must be defeated by all possible means: grainproduction, he said, must