ECONOMYNEXT – German Ambassador Holger Seubert has warned Sri Lanka against wishing for a ‘Hitler’ after a minister expressed a wish for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to act more like Hitler, on top of a similar call by a Buddhist monk earlier.
“I‘m hearing claims that “a Hitler” could be beneficial to Sri Lanka today,” Seubert said in a twitter.com message.
“Let me remind those voices that Adolf Hitler was responsible for human suffering and despair beyond imagination, with millions of deaths. Definitely no role model for any politician!”
I‘m hearing claims that “a Hitler“ could be beneficial to Sri Lanka today. Let me remind those voices that Adolf Hitler was responsible for human suffering and despair beyond imagination, with millions of deaths. Definitely no role model for any politician!
— Ambassador Holger Seubert (@GermanAmbColo) April 13, 2021
Strong Man
Hitler came to power in the wake of money printing, hyperinflation and socialist policy confusion of the post-World War I Germany’s Weimar Republic and later stabilization efforts by the Heinrich Brüning administration which increased unemployment on top of a depression triggered by the US Federal Reserve.
The illiberal socialist policy confusion of the Weimar Republic led to the call of a ‘strong man’ to come to power.
State Minister Dilum Amunugama claimed that people expected President Rajapaksa to run a dictatorship to some extent (yum tharamakerter).
“The Buddhist clergy also said it is ok to be a Hitler, that is good,” Minister Amunugama said. “Now criticism of the government is due to not being a Hitler. I also accept that.
“I do not think the President has a liking to become a Hitler immediately. If he is pushed to towards that, he will become a Hitler and the people will stop blaming him. Things will then happen well.”
Hitler rode to power on the strongly nationalist, anti-minority platform of the National Socialist (Nazi) party which killed and incarcerated millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and later took land (Lebensraum) from Slavs in Eastern Europe and Russia (Generalplan Ost) killing millions more in the process.
He had support from sections of the Lutheran church, some big businesses hit by Weimar instability, and banned all NGOs except some churches.
However Hitler also printed money, primarily through Mefo bills, a mechanism to circumvent a ban on money printing by Reichsbank – Germany’s then central bank.
The scheme involving the discounting of contractor bills through a third party agency was cooked up by economy minister Hjalmar Schacht.
Schacht had been at the Reichsbank during the Weimar Republic.
Sri Lanka’s central bank in addition to printing money indirectly by discounting contractor bills has engaged in the biggest outright money printing exercise in the history of modern Sri Lanka.
The Mefo bills discounting led to forex shortages in Germany as early as 1934 and Hitler promoted a Nazi autarchy (autarky) or what is now known as ‘self-sufficiency’ amid widespread import controls under his Wehrwirtschaft economic policy.
Self-sufficiency was also driven by the Allied naval blockade during World War I.
Hitler engaged in ‘import substitution’ long before the term became popular among Latin American nations which printed money through Argentina-style central banks and ran out of forex.
The German industrial complex went so far as to produce synthetic fuel, cellulose fibres and synthetic rubber, as forex shortages intensified.
Hitler also made a famous ‘Export or Die’ speech, a slogan used by Sri Lanka’s leaders during the 1980s money printing and currency depreciation.
He by-passed the parliament through an Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) and ran the country through gazettes appropriating plenary powers as part of the dictatorship.
After Hitler was defeated by the Allies and which included the Soviet Union at the time, liberals came back to power.
Germany then became a global economic power under the Ordoliberals who started their economic program by setting up a new central bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank, which laid the foundation for the German Economic Miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) defying the Keynesian ideology of depreciation and state spending.
Germany rapidly outpaced Britain, which won World War II but continued to print money under Keynesian ‘stimulus’ and only ended foreign exchange controls 40 years later after Margarat Thatcher came to power applying Austrian economic principles. (Colombo/Apr13/2021)
Very harmful political misinformation being spread in one section of this article:
It is obvious to anyone who has studied politics that Hitler was NOT a socialist. He was a fascist and developed Germany’s own national brand of fascism.
The primary reason for the confusion regarding this is the name of the Nazi party which Hitler led. Anyone who claims Hitler was a socialist just because of the name of his party is making the same mistake as someone who claims that apple fruits and apple phones are made of the same material or are similar in some way because of the name alone.
This troublesome party name is often (misleadingly) translated into English as the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” as the original format of the words in the German name is incompatible with the rules of grammar in English. However, in the original German, the name of the party is the “Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeitspartei”, and it is clear how the German words corresponding to the English terms “National” and “Socialist” are both merged into one word, which may be translated as “National-Socialist”. This is the dead giveaway that this term has nothing to do with the Socialism, as the former denotes a political ideology that aims to construct a “national society” as the name suggests. (“National society”+”-ism”) This means that the party aimed to create an ethnically homogeneous society that is essentially fully subordinated to the Nation State.
This is directly opposed and completely different from Socialism which aims to bring ownership of the economy (means of production) into the hands of the collective public regardless of their nationality or race.
Additionally, the political and economic policies of the Nazi regime show how opposed to socialism they were. In fact, the Nazi party came to power with the promise they made to the German elites at the time that they would stamp out Communism and Socialism in Germany which were popular among the people at the time. This is why most of the wealthiest capitalists in Germany supported the Nazis. Once they came to power, Hitler and his party banned Worker Unions and privatised many previously public corporations that existed in Weimar Germany. In fact, the very term “privatisation” was taken from the Nazi economic policy of “Privatisierung”.
In conclusion, not only was Hitler NOT a socialist, he was a fascist, which is an extreme form of state enforced enforced authoritarian capitalism which sees the State collaborating with private enterprise and suppressing worker movements.