Four-Year Plan

The Four-Year Plan was the Nazis’ economic program to prepare Germany for war. Adolf Hitler personally wrote the memorandum for the plan in August 1936. In this, this intervention in economic policy, Hitler personally set forth the goals of the upcoming war and stipulated a timetable for intensified rearmament. The goals were twofold: to give the Wehrmacht operational capabilities within four years; and to enable the German economy to cope with wartime conditions. To attain these goals, the plan called for the creation of a command economy with special emphasis on protecting German agriculture under war conditions, so that it could withstand a blockade to the limits of its ability. Autarchy would be achieved through the adoption of an expansionist policy that would render Germany less dependent on imported raw materials. For this purpose, the Hermann Goering Reich Works were founded, and refineries and aluminum plants were established. The plan also promoted the development of a synthetic-materials industry, in order to replace raw materials and control of the allocation of labor. Hermann Goering was nominated as commissioner for the implementation of the plan and was given extraordinary general powers in the economic sphere. During the war, these powers were extended to the economic structure of the occupied countries, so as to extract everything possible from them in a policy of ruthless plundering. Goering also directed the deportation of millions of people from the occupied territories to forced-labor camps. Germany’s economic reinvigoration had a direct effect on the potential for speeding up the Reich’s antisemitic policy.