“Hitler privatized the industries” is ridiculously misleading

A number of historians have concluded that "Hitler privatized the industries" based purely on the fact that he sold some stocks in the companies. Yes, this would make sense in a normal 'market' economy, but in the totalitarian economy of the Third Reich, this wasn't "privatization" in any sense of the word, and this video will explain why. We'll be explaining what the Betriebsgemeinschaft was, the role of the Betriebsführer and Gefolgschaft, as well as show what happened to the Deutsche Bank and the Reichsbahn, Hjalmar Schacht, Fritz Thyssen and Wilhelm Keppler.

This video is discussing events or concepts that are academic, educational and historical in nature. This video is for informational purposes and was created so we may better understand the past and learn from the mistakes others have made.

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📚 BIBLIOGRAPHY / SOURCES 📚

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ABOUT TIK 📝

History isn’t as boring as some people think, and my goal is to get people talking about it. I also want to dispel the myths and distortions that ruin our perception of the past by asking a simple question - “But is this really the case?”. I have a 2:1 Degree in History and a passion for early 20th Century conflicts (mainly WW2). I’m therefore approaching this like I would an academic essay. Lots of sources, quotes, references and so on. Only the truth will do.

[TheImperatorKnight]

Hope you guys are doing well. I know I've covered this subject before, but I wanted to specifically tackle the part about the National Socialists selling stocks as "privatization", which I haven't actually addressed directly. Plus, having a separate video on it allows for easy sharing when someone makes the claim that Hitler "privatized the industries".

[SonofTiamat]

If you own a car but can only drive it when and where the state tells you, do you really own it?

[robertthecag]

I had to stop reading Wages of Destruction after he said A.H. took control of all farms. All goods were to be sold to the state at the price the state set. Said if a farmer made milk or cheese from the cows, he "owned" and sold them it in town he would be arrested and put in a concentration camp. Then said it was a right wing economy.

[dorrin]

Harold James unironically believes that private ownership and property were left untouched while the laws defining property and ownership were radically transformed...?


Did he even proofread that? Those two sentences are mutually exclusive.

[Runenschuppe]

"Do you want to buy a company from me?" "Yes, of course! Here's your money." "Great. Now, here's the list of products we want you to make, the prices you're meant to set and the people you need to hire and fire." "But... I thought it's my company now?" "Of course it is. As long as you do exactly as we tell you."

The freedom of capitalism!

[praz]

I can understand why they say Hitler is capitalist tbh. It's because as per Marxists, if there are any businesses, it's capitalism. For many Marxists, even Stalin was a capitalist because he didn't give democratic control to workers over industries, for others, only Hitler was capitalist because he didn't gulag all industrialists. For some socialists, capitalism is not free market so they do agree that Hitler was not free market but they think he's capitalist because he was authoritarian.

In my opinion what Hitler did was another version of Mussolini's corporatism which I see as an alternative to capitalism and Marxism. His version was less pro private property in practice than Mussolini's fascism and it put emphasis on race. We can see a version of this is China and Russia today. Even Nordic countries practice a form of corporatism.

[Ema]

Every historian says that that the Third Reich was a Totalitarian state, I think we can all agree about it. Despite that I just can't understand how so many people claim thats said totalitarian state could have a free market or that state control was minimal. How could a totalitarian state work without a proper state controlled economy? Thanks for what you do and for the level of detail you reach in less than one hour of video.

[c.philipmckenzie]

This is why I support your work: I believe it is of vital importance to accurately investigate history and give an honest account wherever it leads, and you do that. Thank you.

[kikastra]

What a great scheme. Sell the stocks of a bank to raise money for rearmament and public works, only to basically keep control of the entity you sold the stocks of. Brilliantly crafty and schemey!

[sounghungi]

Gotta love the whole, "It was a market economy that doesn't have any market influences." I don't know how somebody could have wrote that and not go, "Wait that doesn't sound right...."

[JoBlakeLisbon]

The reality is that most of the educated class - including PHDs, professionals, politicians etc are economically illiterate.

I recommended Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics to a friend. He is a business owner and has done very well for himself but halfway through commented to me that he realised that he was totally clueless about economics. This applies to 99.99 percent of the voting population and accounts for most of the confusion. People don't know the basics.

[noahL]

If the state gives industry concessions to individuals in society that are part of the governmental party, they cease to be private actors, they are public actors and it becomes a public form of ownership and control.

[Batmans_Pet_Goldfish]

So basically:

"Reee they were selling stocks and shares!"
"To whom?"

[kamilmatejka]

At this point I wouldn't be really surprised if there was a history book in which the author would've claimed that USSR actually was a free market society, except most characteristics normaly associated with one. Thank you for all the hard work, TIK!

[alexandregb]

A good book about that is: The Vampire Economy.

[joanalcaraz]

Hi Tik! Great video! As an economist at the University of Barcelona and a former student in Bel's lessons, I must say that his views on social affairs are basically biased because he has been a committed socialist since he was young. He was part of the PSC ( Socialist Catalan Party) and even a representative for Barcelona (province) of this party. He is not even a historian, just an economist, so maybe this is why he makes this oversimplified statement of the III Reich market, just taking into account the ownership of the stock market shares and not counting on the regulations that the nazi state enforces. Or maybe it is just to reaffirm his point because the whole picture of the labor organization in Germany in those years contradicts his point.
And by omitting this, he contradicts himself because he is a great defender of state regulations as the basis of market problems, especially in the design of infrastructure.
So I think, as you say at the beginning of the video, he is just trying to assimilate nazism to the free market in order to justify his socialist views.

[duckling]

Do you know what's funny thing? In my Bulgarian school. A post SOVIET country, my history teacher told us both that totalitarianism exhibited by both the USSR, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany meant the the total control of the economy AND that inflation means expansion of the money supply while they gave us a perfectly good word for when currency loses its worth. Devaluation. It is really strange that my country which should be fully of Soviet historical revisionism gets this better than Western "liberal" economists.

[StetoGuy]

With all these contradictions I find your previous video on Hegel very relevant. Their ignorance of basic political definitions seems to be of the average person on the street, except the problem is these 'historians' are supposed to be 'specialists' in their field.

[barahng]

Reminds me of China. It's similar to how the CCP allows "private firms" technically speaking, but practically speaking the state can just seize all their assets and dissolve the company at any time. And requiring companies to employ political commissars to make sure they are conducting business in a way the state agrees with. Not quite the same as a centrally managed Stalinist style economy but it's definitely not capitalism or privatized in any real practical way if the right to private property can be revoked at any time with no due process.

[kurandor]

As a german hearing this is just bizzare. All of this could be learned by reading a school textbook, and yet these "economics professors" only look at how the leadership shuffeled assets between themselves and their friends and conclude that NAZI GERMANY ALLOWED FOR GREAT INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM! I genuenly struggle to understand how anyone could come to that conclusion and I hope that next time they try to do research they start by reading a history book first and only look at the spreadsheets afterwards, as numbers without context have, and will alwasy be, completeley meaningless.