Office of Four-Year Plan Saved Thousands of Jews

Which was kinda ironic because this office was headed by the same Hermann G;ring who in July of 1941 tasked Reinhard Heydrich with designing and implementing the “final solution to the Jewish question” and approved extermination of all Jews under German control.

The Nazi Four-Year Plan (commenced in 1936) was inspired by Soviet Five-Year Plans (commenced in 1929) and had the same objective: to create (in this case, re-create) the military-industrial monster capable of conquering and occupying sufficient Lebensraum in the East (the Soviet one was to be in the West) for ultimate self-sufficiency of Germany… in everything. Making sure that the horrors of Blockade of Germany never, ever happen again.

According to the plan, Germany had to be ready for a Second Great War in four years. It was ready in three. The basic premise of the Four-Year Plan was that the war with Russia was inevitable. Which was true – whether Hitler wanted it or not – and whether he liked it or not (he did).

Hitler placed Hermann G;ring (his second-in-command) in charge of these measures, making him a Reich Plenipotentiary whose jurisdiction cut across the responsibilities Minister of Economics, the Defense Minister, Minister of Agriculture. Which made complete sense – otherwise it would not have been possible to overcome bureaucratic ineptitude and red tape.

The Four-Year Plan was part of the highly efficient “alternative governmental structure” created by Hitler, which included entities such as Organisation Todt and the unification of the SS and the German police forces (Order Police, Gestapo and Kripo) under SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler.

However, it also had very ambitious civilian objectives: reduce unemployment; increase synthetic fiber 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 other words, both guns and butter were planned. The German state, through under the industrial conglomerate Reichswerke, began building refineries, aluminum plants, and factories for the development of synthetic materials.

In his memo on this plan written in August of 1936, Hitler called for Germany to have the world’s first army in terms of fighting power within the next four years (it did) and that the extent of the military development of our resources cannot be too large, nor its pace too swift and the role of the German economy was simply to support Germany’s self-assertion and the extension of her Lebensraum.

Hitler extended to G;ring the power to make law simply by publishing decrees, which enabled him to create other plenipotentiaries in overall charge of various German industries. The Four-Year Plan technically expired in 1940, but the “Office of the Four-Year Plan”, a cabinet-level agency, had grown so powerful that the plan was extended indefinitely.

G;ring constantly expanded the scope of the plan until he became (through the Office of the Four-Year Plan) the de facto master of the German economy (and subsequently economies of annexed and occupied territories).

After the Anschluss, the Reichswerke absorbed Austrian heavy industries, including those owned by private German investors. After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Reichswerke absorbed between 50% and 60% of Czech heavy industries.

The pattern was repeated in occupied Poland, France and the Soviet Union. The Reichswerke operated captured assets as far from its Berlin base as Liep;ja in Latvia and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

In February 1938 G;ring pumped up the Reichswerke capital from 5 to 400 million ;;;;, starting a chain of mergers and acquisitions. In April the Reichswerke moved into weapons production by absorbing Rheinmetall. In a few following months the Reichswerke consolidated most of Austrian heavy industries, from extraction of ore to production of advanced weapons.

After the outbreak of the war, the Reichswerke abandoned peacetime formalities and simply took over all assets it found attractive. It declared itself “a trustee for the German state” for the duration of the war, a “white knight” saving occupied countries from “colonialism” of big business. Settlements and compensations, when recognized, were delayed until the end of the war

By the end of 1941 the Reichswerke became the largest company in Europe and probably in the whole world, with a capital of 2.4 billion ;;;; and about half a million workers.

Such an enormous industrial monster required a lot of labor – first and foremost, highly skilled labor. Which was very good news for the Jews as G;ring was sufficiently powerful to spare from gas chambers any Jew he needed.

Which ultimately saved thousands of Jewish lives.