New plan
The New Plan was an economic legislation in National Socialist Germany . He prematurely replaced the first four-year plan of December 1, 1933.
The new plan was initiated and announced by the newly appointed Reich Minister of Economics, Hjalmar Schacht , with which Germany should be brought out of its delicate currency situation .
The basis was the framework law on the trade in industrial raw materials and semi-finished products of March 22, 1934 under the influence of Schacht - at that time still President of the Reichsbank - which was extended to all industrial goods with its revision of July 13, 1934. The law became one of the most momentous regulations for the entire German economy. With his ordinance of September 4, 1934, Schacht gave this law its final form, which was announced as the New Plan .
Control bodies for import and export
In order to implement the New Plan, from September 1934 the most important organs of the state bureaucracy were set up, the monitoring agencies (renamed in August 1939 as Reichsstellen). These replaced the foreign exchange offices . They supervised the import of raw materials and goods and formed a complete system that included all items in the list of goods for the German customs tariff . From then on, the entire German production depended on its smooth functioning. The monitoring agencies worked closely with the economic and specialist groups of the Reichsgruppe Industrie on import control, foreign exchange and raw material management and price regulation .
To control and regulate the export of goods , the industry set up inspection bodies , which formed the industrial-commercial correspondence with the monitoring bodies. These were usually headed by the managing directors of the business groups . The main task was to steer and promote exports in order to increase the necessary inflow of foreign currency. The so-called self-help action of the German economy launched in 1935 brought about financial export subsidies and thus also control of export prices through company taxes.
From then on, import and export were associated with a great deal of bureaucratic effort for the companies, the approval of which was doubtful. Smaller companies that did not have a large staff were thereby disadvantaged. The leading persons of the business groups employed in the examination offices were able to weaken smaller competing companies with this set of instruments.
Until the outbreak of the Second World War , the value of German imports and exports was no more than a third of what it was in 1928/29. The stock of gold reserves and foreign exchange could not be increased again.
See also
literature
- Sören Dengg: Germany's exit from the League of Nations and Schacht's “New Plan”. On the relationship between foreign and foreign trade policy in the transition phase from the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich 1919–1934. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 978-3-8204-9639-0 .
- Daniela Kahn: The control of the economy by law in National Socialist Germany. The example of the Reichsgruppe Industrie. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-465-04012-5 , pp. 211-216.