Nazi Business

Compare the usefulness of documents B D and F as evidence of the relationship between business and the Nazi government (40) When looking at the usefulness of sources we first need to look at who and when they were written. Document B was written by Rudolf Hess who was one of Hitler’s right hand man. It was written at the time in question and so I would say it is at least reliable. This source explains that the Nazi party is not backing the act that they should shut down all the bigger department stores and other larger stores in order to make room for the smaller bread winners and to provide them more jobs. But they state that putting thousands of other workers out their jobs is not the way to go about this. But yet they are saying that it is also forbidden to make propaganda in their favour. Thus proves useful into the fact that although the Nazis relationship with business is that they seem to be in favour the smaller businesses they are not prepared to put all the other workers at risk.

As far as they are concerned at least some people are in work and although would go against their principles to back the larger stores as it was seen that they were held by the Jewish greedy race they were keeping some of the German communities in work!! Document D is written in a report by a SPD agent in central Germany in 1939. The fact that it was written by a SPD agent proves that it will have to be the truth as they were a police service that would report accurate reports on Germany.

Although the fact that they are probably working against the Nazi party could suggest that they would be slightly bias against the party in this actual report, This states that all the small business man that are owners of smaller shops etc are very quickly losing their faith in the Nazi rulers capability. They are feeling “Demoralised” about the fact that they can no longer keep up with the demand that they are being given as there is not enough raw supplies and so when they fail to meet the demands then the government then takes over the business and the man is shoved into a completely different job that they think he will manage better although this is totally over dominating the men and making them feel almost worthless in the eyes of others and themselves. So this document is also proving that under the Nazi rule the relationships between them and business is really in the favour of the bigger ones and almost making sure that the smaller ones lose all their business and even their confidence so that they feel undermined by the larger ones and so they get their business taken off them. The relationship between the smaller businesses is awful and they are completely relying on the larger ones even though without the smaller ones they wouldn’t even be in the position to give out these rules as they were the ones who worked hard to get Germany back on its feet! In document F this is a detailed table of the success and profits of the companies in Germany! It shows the figures of two smaller companies and one larger company. The two smaller ones have actually both increased their income and profit so you would think that they would be happy with the outcome of these new policies and agree with what they are saying. Although if you actually look at the income and profit of the larger company in this table you see that the income increase of the other two now become quite insignificant in comparison to the massive increase in this company! This actual one has more than tripled their income! When looking at this table without extra knowledge we could say that the larger company profits in Germany at this time was greatly out weighing the smaller ones. How ever what we must think about is the fact that the large company is that it really is one of the massive chemical companies that greatly benefited from the new Nazi regime due to the rearmament. In the table their is only one larger business to compare to the two smaller ones. What we dont really see is just how small these other two are.

Maybe they have actually just recently come into business. The table holds no other extra information about the smaller two so without this it is really unfair to compare this two the one big one. We need a wider range of comparison to look at with a bit more detailed information. Although this table needs more it is still useful in telling us that they were indeed larger businesses that were heavily profiting from this regime but as Ive said this could have had something to do with the fact that Geobells had aimed all the profitable schemes at his own personal friends.

Looking at all three of these documents I conclude that document B is reliable and useful in the fact that it was written by Rudolf Hess who would have all the “inside” knowledge that the party would be talking about on the inside. Also this was not going to be public knowledge as it was written for other party members therefore holds no propaganda issues. it tells us that government is not backing the idea to try and put all the department stores out of business by “paralyzing” them.

We know in fact that there was actually a one day blockade and that there was indeed posters issued describing that the “greedy jewish’s” department stores were almost sucking the profits out of other smaller wholesome businesses.

Document D I also think is useful as it is written from a reliable source and states that the smaller business men are feeling demoralised by the government and that they aren’t getting the support they need which is also backing up the information in Document B.

As I have said I believe that although Document F is useful to a point as it show the difference in the profit between the different sized business as said in the other two. However I believe that it could be more reliable as it really needs a wider range of comparison so that they have more of the larger shops to compare to the other ones and that they should have slightly more information about just how big the stores are. together all the documents are useful in telling us that the larger businesses are “taking over” the small ones and that they are receiving the main priority and the profits where as the smaller ones are getting either completely ignored or even getting their businesses taken off them!