Going from mass unemployment to no unemployment in 6 years

A lesson in history. And realise that I am a virulent anti-Fascist ("antifa und sehr stolz darauf!").

I run into several people in the UK who proudly tell me that Hitler got rid of unemployment and made Germany prosperous usw. But for his slight mistake in invading Poland  ....

OK where did the unemployment go? And can we use a similar solution now (without the nasty racial overtones, invading other countries without being asked, and starting another world war)?

1. Some 4 million people emigrated (including many non-Jews incidentally). A number of these people were business owners, not unemployed people. So the old claims of the French FN, for example (3 million unemployed, 3 million immigrants - i.e. kick the immigrants out = no unemployed), don't work, because you are actually kicking out a number of people who employ people!

2. Into the armed forces. According to the Treaty of Versailles the German armed forces had not to exceed 100,000 serving personnel. Hitler ignored this, and boosted the armed forces to 1.4 million. All well and good, but why would you want so many people in the armed forces if you don't want to start a war?

3. Into what was essentially a mobile forced labour organisation, building roads and bridges usw. Forced labour? Well what if you refused to comply? Try telling that to the Gestapo! In principle I have no problem with this on a voluntary basis if the people are paid a living wage. See also later.

4. Women were expected to stay home and have children and not work unless there were jobs available for them - i.e. no female "unemployed". Unrealistic to say the least (and unmarried women over 40 usw?).

5. Building the war machine. The weapons and aircraft builders of the Ruhr (all private companies note - like Krupp usw) got massive orders from the government to build all this stuff. This required labour in massive numbers and boosted company profits. Of course the government was paying for the goods it purchased. Again if you weren't starting a war, why would you do this?

6. Increased internal personnel - to round up the "antisocial elements", build the places these elements would be kept, guard them, and worse .... Our prison systems could do to be enhanced, but not like this!

7. Crucial to all of this? Any conservatives out there adding up the sums? This is all government expenditure! The budget deficit quadrupled over a 6-year period. In other words to get unemployment down from 6 million to zero, you needed simply to quadruple the budget deficit! There are non-warlike ways of doing this usw. For how long you would get away with it, though?

Without a war starting how long would Hitler have been able to run up deficits like that even before the IMF and World Bank came into existence? Interesting question!