Nada como dois artigos interessantes:

Averting the Nazi Seizure of Power: A Counterfactual Thought Experiment
Christian Stögbauer and John Komlos
Department of Economics, University of Munich

Abstract: The Great Depression in Germany led to the radicalization of the electorate, leading the country and then the world into the darkest days of Western Civilization. Could it have been otherwise? This paper explores whether the NSDAP takeover might have been averted with a fiscal policy that lowered the unemployment rate in those parts of Germany where their support rose most rapidly. A counterfactual simulation model based on estimates of the relationship between unemployment and the radical vote at the electoral district level provides a framework for considering how much lower unemployment would have to have been in those districts to prevent the NSDAP from becoming a formidable political force in Germany. Budget neutrality is maintained, so that the simulations do not depend on an expanded fiscal policy. The results indicate that such a policy could well have averted the NSDAP’s seizure of power, and the catastrophe that followed in its wake.

Guns and Butter – But No Margarine: The Impact of Nazi Agricultural and Consumption Policies on German Food Production and Consumption, 1933-38

Paper prepared for the XIV International Economic History Congress,

Helsinki, Finland, 21 to 25 August 2006

Session 85: Guns Versus Butter Paradoxes in History
22 August, 14:00-17:30 h

Mark Spoerer and Jochen Streb

This version: 1 June 2006

Abstract
The implementation of the Nazi ideology into agricultural institutions and the suppression of private consumption had a stronger impact on German food production and consumption than has hitherto been thought. We argue that the reforms of agrarian institutions reduced the growth of total factor productivity in German agriculture between 1933 and 1938 considerably. This exacerbated the restrictive effects of prioritizing the armaments industry to the detriment of the consumer goods industry and private consumption. As a consequence of less efficient food production and of consumption constraints, German consumers were forced to a diet and thus to a material standard of life that were much more frugal than national income figures suggest.

É a história econômica séria nos ajudando a entender um terrível período da história. Note estes trechos, no segundo artigo:

At a time when Keynesian ideas began to dominate the thinking of economic policy makers the apparent success of the Nazis’ interventionist policy between 1933 and 1939 was seen as a case study which might serve as a possible toolbox for democratic planners as well and was thus worth to be analyzed thoroughly.

Não apenas isto, como o próprio John Kenneth Galbraith parece ter se enganado terrivelmente sobre o regime nazista (ver p.2-3). Mais:

(…) agriculture was the only economic sector in which the Nazis implemented their ideological aims at large scale. The two most important institutional changes were the Reichsnährstand and the Reichserbhofgesetz (Hereditary Farm Law). Both new institutions decreased the scope of action of the individual farmers. The Reichsnährstand regulated prices and production programs by direct interventions which considerably constrained pioneer farmers’ possibilities to introduce innovative products or production methods according to their private knowledge, and therefore probably resulted in lower productivity growth.

A conclusão deste segundo artigo tem um interessante debate sobre como os alemães, prejudicados em seu consumo, teriam apoiado o regime de Hitler.