The History of Consumption in Nazi Germany Print E-mail

Hartmut Berghoff

Hartmut Berghoff's project reconstructs the effects of political intervention on consumption in Germany during the rule of the National Socialists.
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Kraft durch Freude' Catalog, 1938.
From the very beginning of the regime, Nazi consumption policies operated within a highly inconsistent framework of conflicting principles. Rearmament had top priority from the outset, which in effect meant that the state had to curb private in favor of public consumption. The degree of restriction, however, was never clear and always subject to tactical considerations. Thus, consumption was promoted and suppressed at the same time. In one of its most successful propaganda ploys, the Nazi regime created a virtual reality that was geared to the desires of modern consumers. The regime took initiatives to put products on the mass market that were still regarded as luxuries, although most of these promises failed to materialize. For the first time in history, cars, holidays abroad, convenience food, television sets, and refrigerators seemed – thanks to Hitler – to be available for everyone. This project will examine key macroeconomic decisions as well as important sectors of the economy, ranging from the media to the leisure industry. It will look not only at the political decisions but also at the way consumers reacted to them. In its general perspective, the project tries to understand the role the "Third Reich" in the history of consumption in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.