Citation

Spoerer M, Streb J, 昭彦, 郁夫. J. Polit. Econ. Econ. Hist. 2008; 50(4): 46-58.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Seiji Keizaigaku Keizaishi Gakkai)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

More than half a century after the collapse of the Third Reich, satisfactory economic explanations for the most important economic processes of the Nazi period are still lacking. That is why these economic processes are often christened "miracles" by historians. Recently, however, a group of German economic historians started the attempt to demystify these "miracles" with the help of modern economic theory and econometrics. In this review article, we present both the new methods and the new results of this research programme to Japanese scholars. In section 2, under the headline "Deformed economic miracle" we analyse the distorted macroeconomic development of the Third Reich until the outbreak of the Second World War. In section 3, headed "The 'miracle' of the armament industry", we show that the Nazis directed the German economy generally not by compulsion and the threat of violence but by setting adequate economic incentives which secured the voluntary cooperation of profit-oriented entrepreneurs.