Нацистік Германияның төрт жылдық жоспары

Series of economic measures in Nazi Germany
The Four Year Plan was a series of economic measures initiated by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany in 1936. Hitler placed Hermann Göring in charge of these measures, making him a Reich Plenipotentiary (Reichsbevollmächtigter) whose jurisdiction cut across the responsibilities of various cabinet ministries, including those of the Minister of Economics, the Defense Minister and the Minister of Agriculture. The Four Year Plan was part of the alternative governmental structure created by Hitler and the Nazi Party, which included entities such as Organisation Todt and the unification of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the German police forces, including the Gestapo, under Heinrich Himmler. The primary purpose of the Four Year Plan was to provide for the rearmament of Germany, and to prepare the country for self sufficiency in four years, from 1936 to 1940. Aside from emphasizing the rebuilding of the nation's military defenses, in disregard of the restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after the German defeat in World War I, the Four Year Plan sought to reduce unemployment; increase synthetic fibre production, undertake public works projects under the direction of Fritz Todt, increase automobile production, initiate numerous building and architectural projects and further develop the Autobahn system.

In 1933, Hitler had laid down his foreign policy priorities as "natural antagonism" towards the Soviet Union. In the autumn of 1935, various business leaders complained to Hitler about the overwhelming costs of the rearmament, only for Hermann Göring to speak about the necessity of preparing for the coming war against the Soviet Union.

In August 1936, in response to a growing crisis in the German economy caused by the strains of rearmament, Hitler issued the "Four Year Plan Memorandum" ordering Göring to carry out the Four Year Plan to have the German economy ready for war within the next four years. During the 1936 economic crisis, the German government was divided into two factions with one (the so called "free market" faction) centering around the Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht and the Price Commissioner Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler calling for decreased military spending and a turn away from autarkic policies, and another faction around Göring calling for the opposite. Hitler hesitated for the first half of 1936 before siding with the more radical faction in his "Four Year Plan" memo of August. Historians such as Richard Overy have argued that the importance of the memo, which was written personally by Hitler, can be gauged by the fact that Hitler, who had something of a phobia about writing, hardly ever wrote anything down, which indicates that Hitler had something especially important to say. The "Four Year Plan Memorandum" predicated an imminent all out, apocalyptic struggle between "Judeo Bolshevism" and German National Socialism, which necessitated a total effort at rearmament regardless of the economic costs. The basic premise of the Four Year Plan memo was that "the showdown with Russia is inevitable".</blockquote>

Hitler called for Germany to have the world's "first army" in terms of fighting power within the next four years and that "the extent of the military development of our resources cannot be too large, nor its pace too swift" (emphasis in the original) and the role of the economy was simply to support "Germany's self assertion and the extension of her Lebensraum". Hitler went on to write that given the magnitude of the coming struggle that the concerns expressed by members of the "free market" faction like Schacht and Goerdeler that the current level of military spending was bankrupting Germany were irrelevant. Hitler wrote that: "However well balanced the general pattern of a nation's life ought to be, there must at particular times be certain disturbances of the balance at the expense of other less vital tasks. If we do not succeed in bringing the German army as rapidly as possible to the rank of premier army in the world then Germany will be lost!" Along the same lines, Hitler wrote later in his memo: "The nation does not live for the economy, for economic leaders, or for economic or financial theories; on the contrary, it is finance and the economy, economic leaders and theories, which all owe unqualified service in this struggle for the self assertion of our nation"."

The Four Year Plan favoured both the protection of agriculture and the promotion of autarky (economic independence) for Germany. Göring was put in charge of the Four Year Plan at its inception and given plenipotentiary powers. He had complete control over the economy, including the private sector, especially after the Minister of Economics, Hjalmar Schacht, had begun to lose favour with Hitler for opposing the growing military expenditures at the expense of civilian economic growth. During the following years, the state, under the industrial conglomerate Reichswerke, began building refineries, aluminium plants, and factories for the development of synthetic materials. The Four Year Plan technically expired in 1940, but the "Office of the Four Year Plan", a cabinet level agency, had grown to such a power base that the plan was extended indefinitely.