WTB plan
Under the title WTB Plan an imagined in January 1932 the program was active economic policy and job creation in the world economic crisis known, the mainly part of the unions ( ADGB was born). It is named after the initials of its main proponents Wladimir Woytinsky , Fritz Tarnow and Fritz Baade .
prehistory
In view of the dramatic worsening of the global economic crisis and the widespread dissatisfaction with the prevailing policy of deflation in Germany , the head of the ADGB's statistical department, Vladimir Woytinsky, opened a debate on active economic policy in the June 1931 issue of Die Arbeit . He had the backing of the chairman of the woodworkers' union Fritz Tarnow. Woytinsky opposed a passive, “meteorological” attitude to economic problems, advocated an international increase in prices, but also outlined a national program of action to stimulate the German economy. This is where the origins of the WTB plan lie. In September 1931, a secret conference of the Friedrich List Society also dealt with economic stimulus programs - here Wilhelm Lautenbach , Government Councilor in the Reich Ministry of Economics, presented his plan ( Lautenbach Plan ).
Within the SPD parliamentary group, its agriculture spokesman Fritz Baade advocated active economic policy. In a conference on December 23, 1931, the ADGB board dealt with a paper that already essentially corresponds to the WTB plan and in which the employment of 1 million unemployed people was demanded through public works.
Resistance in the SPD
The WTB plan was presented on January 26, 1932, was signed by Fritz Tarnow and was formally approved by the ADGB in April 1932. However, the plan met with little approval from the leadership of the German Social Democrats. Both the parliamentary group leader Rudolf Breitscheid and party leader Otto Wels as well as the economic experts Rudolf Hilferding and Fritz Naphtali were skeptical. On the one hand it was apparently about the interference of the ADGB in the party's sphere of economic competence and the unwillingness to “play doctor at the bedside of capitalism”, and on the other hand it was concerned with inflation . As a compromise, financing through a "popular loan" was targeted. However, the SPD failed to go into the election campaign for the Reichstag election of July 31, 1932 with a popular job creation program comparable to Gregor Strasser's “immediate program” propagated by the NSDAP . The fact that this ended with a doubling of the number of votes and seats in the Hitler party is attributed by numerous observers to the fact that no democratic party took up the issue of active economic policy.
literature
- Gottfried Bombach : The Keynesianism. Volume 3. Berlin / Göttingen 1981.
- Ursula Büttner : Political alternatives to Brüning's deflationary course. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte No. 37/1989, p. 209 ff. ( PDF )
- Wladimir Woytinsky: Stormy Passage. (Memories), New York 1961.