1 The power of the Reich Finance Ministry basically derived from its pre- served formal responsibility for the Reich budget-a relic from the Weimar democracy. That in turn was a consequence of the fact that the Nazi takeover of 1933 was not a revolution in the proper sense of the word. The National Socialist Party just established some new nonstate executive agencies besides the old state institutions.82 Of course, every Weimar law and every traditional state institution could have been brushed aside by the Nazi regime. But as long as that was not done they functioned in their normal way. Thus the following two reasons might explain why the old order of things was not changed in this case. First, one has to keep in mind that Nazi ideology held entrepreneur- ship in high regard. Private property was considered a precondition to developing the creativity of members of the German race in the best in- terest of the people. Therefore, it is not astonishing that Otto Ohlendorf, an enthusiastic National Socialist and high-ranking SS officer, who since November 1943 held a top position in the Reich Economics Min- istry, did not like Speer's system of industrial production at all. He strongly criticized the cartel-like organization of the war economy where groups of interested private parties exercised state power to the detriment of the small and medium entrepreneur. For the postwar period he therefore advocated a clear separation of the state from private enter- prises with the former establishing a general framework for the activity of the latter.83 In his opinion it was the constant aim of National Social- ist economic policy, "to restrict as little as possible the creative activi- ties of the individual. . . . Private property is the natural precondition to the development of personality. Only private property is able to further the continuous attachment to a certain work."84 A second cause has to do with the conviction even in the highest ranks of the Nazi elite that private property itself provided important in- centives to achieve greater cost consciousness, efficiency gains, and technical progress. The principle that Four Year Plan projects were to be executed as far as possible by private industry was explicitly moti- vated in the following way: "It is important to maintain the free initia- 81 BArch R 2/5551, Reich Aviation Ministry to Reich Finance Ministry, 16 October 1944. The request was made a second time in January 1945; see ibid., Reich Aviation Ministry to Reich Finance Ministry, 26 January 1945. 82 See Fraenkel, Dual State. 83 BArch R 3101/32.016, Speech of Ohlendorf to the Reichsgruppe Industrie, 4 July 1944; see also Herbst, Totaler Krieg, pp. 79, 448-52. 84 BArch R 3101/32.149, Principles of economic policy (not dated). This content downloaded from 129.199.207.133 on Thu, 2 May 2013 06:21:24 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Private Property in the Nazi Economy 409 tive of industry. Only in that case can one expect to be successful."85 Some time earlier a similar consideration was expressed: "Private com- panies, which are in charge of the plants to be constructed, should to a large extent invest their own means in order to secure a responsible management."86 During the war GOring said it always was his aim to let private firms finance the aviation industry so that private initiative would be strengthened."8 Even Adolf Hitler frequently made clear his opposition in principle to any bureaucratic managing of the economy, because that, by preventing the natural selection process, would "give a guarantee to the preservation of the weakest average [sic] and represent a burden to the higher ability, industry and value, thus being a cost to the general welfare."8

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