Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism Paperback – November 3, 2014

I am American. Many years ago I vacationed in Germany and asked my tour guide how Nazis went from a standing start in 1934 to most powerful military in the world in 1939. She had no answers. But this book does! Nazi Germany surreptitiously robbed private businesses of their private resources through deep state regulations. Those resources were then used to created a strong military. Fascism is really a dictatorship through regulation.

I am just 30 pages into this book, but the author uses letters from businessmen in 1939 Germany as evidence that Hitler's Reich was a clone of Stalin's USSR. The Nazis hated private property and essentially outlawed it. Bribery was the only way to obtain raw materials, foreign currency, workers - virtually anything. Nazi party apparatchiks infested even the smallest parts of the economy."Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system", wrote one businessman. The businessman goes on to say that once Hitler confiscates all property from the Jews, that " it will be the turn of the 'white Jews' which means us Aryan businessmen after the Jews have been expropriated.".When you combine this book with General William Donovan's Nurnburg trial papers concerning Hitler's anti-Christian, anti-liberty and Soviet style indoctrination policies, you realize that thinking of the Nazis as "right wing" is total propaganda, which of course it was and still is to this day.You should also read Albert Speer's books to understand how he tried to dismantle this corrupt Soviet style economy late in the war to increase military production:http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Third-Reich-Albert-Speer/dp/0684829495/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393595969&sr=1-1&keywords=albert+speerOK - finished the book. The Nazis were ignorant when it came to economics. They did virtually everything wrong just like Herr Hitler's alter ego - Joseph Stalin. Because markets set prices, markets indicate where to allocate capital and hence where opportunities lie for innovation and increased production. Once the "all-knowing" state interferes in this process, markets and hence economies collapse.Reimann meticulously describes how the Nazi economy operated. It was an economy of statism, cronyism, bureaucracy and coercion. What wasn't confiscated was trashed. As Nazi Germany expanded geographically, the state expropriated businesses while paying the owners and creditors pennies on the dollar.History books give the impression that businessmen were natural allies of Hitler and the Nazis. That is total nonsense. Every business was loaded with political commissars who siphoned off money for themselves and the Nazi party leaving the natural owners and operators of the businesses powerless.Hitler was a Socialist. So is Obama. Their combined knowledge of how economies operate is ZERO. They destroy everything they touch.

The best I've read about actual interworking of German economy. It's social implications and results. The books lays it out in black and white why fascism, national socialism and communism are all ultimately one and the same .

It was terrible for the businessmen in Nazi Germany. Or at least if you weren't one of the few big onesoperating in steel and weaponry industries. Even they had to settle for much less than what they'd thoughtHitler would've helped them expropriate! Heavy taxations, tons and tons of regulation and nowhere in theentrepreneurs' offices were there areas that were safe from Nazi oversight. They would barely leave their business alone. The Nazi government had a different, more complicated beurocracy than the ones in USSR. But was it liberal?No!Neither was it about some end goal where ''everyone owned and managed everything'' as envisioned( or dreamt up! ) in the Soviet Union. The state was to be everything, the individual nothing but a pawn/tool for the state. Lenin's belief was that the state would eventually fade away naturally as they builtcommunism, but Hitler's belief was that once the state takes control ( directly or indirectly ) of all industries,trade etc, then the ideal had pretty much been realized.Those were some of the big differences between the socialists in the USSR, and the Third Reich. Then, ofcourse there was the horrible racial hatred too. Good book!

Ever since I found this book written by a German economist about the economy of Germany in 1939 I have wondered WHY it has never been reprinted? I have come to the conclusion that TPTB do not want us to read this because history is repeating here in the United States and this book basically shows current events in light of 1939 Germany. A progressive's view of fascist style economy where a powerful Government in cooperation with BIG business entities function to control every aspect of a countries citizens written by someone who understands economics. If you want to see where the US is going, just buy a copy of "The Vampire Economy" and you will understand...

Written by a German refugee economist in 1939, this book provides a comprehensive picture of the life of a non-party businessman in the run up to World War II.

All wars are fueled by economic activity. This book shows how the Nazis milked the established capitalist interests to fuel the growth of Nazi power leading to WWII. A great read!

Fascinating book about Nazi fascism and business in Hitler's Germany. Though they loathed one another's system's of government, it's interesting to read of the many similarities in outcome between Hitler's Socialism and Stalin's.

El gobierno de Hitler no se llamaba Nacional Socialista para confundir, como nos han hecho creer siempre. Realmente era un régimen socialista con todo regulado en el que no se podía hacer nada sin el permiso del gobierno/partido. Importar, contratar, despedir, establecer precios, todo venia indicado por el estado.Todas las empresas tenían en nómina un "abogado" con contactos con el partido para saber cuando y como cumplir una normativa, como canalizar los sobornos para que te aprobaran tus necesidades.Las empresas tampoco podían repartir beneficios entre los "propietarios" sin permiso del estado, y sus beneficios acumulados debían invertirse en el Reich Bank, para que estuvieran a disposición del estado. Los negocios no estaban nacionalizados, pero estaban supeditados a las necesidades del estado en todo momento.

First off, the edition provided by the Mises institute is quite good with large readable font, the font isnt completely crisp but that shouldnt be expected for the price.Secondly, the content of the book gives a clear picture of the situation that business owners faced operating in the 1930s with extensive references for each claim. There are many anecdotes given of individual business owners going through struggles to continue normal operations in the face of government interference.Lastly, one must keep in mind the author of the work is perceiving the economy and economic activity through a marxist lens, which should be noted but all writers have bias in any case.

This book appears to have been finalised around the Summer of 1939 but don't think it is for historians only! It analyses in detail how national socialists harassed the whole economy and highlights the unintended but disastrous consequences for standards of living of the general population (of an allegedly economically successful country as it was considered back then and still is now). The interesting bit is that, even though the driving force behind those policies was period- and ideology-specific, the actual policies of price and wage controls/caps, ballooning of the state bureaucracy and red tape, molesting companies to hire and invest for political rather than rational business reasons, controls on foreign trade and currency, etc. etc., these policies are all with us today, to an extent at least. So this account of what they led to when taken to the extreme is a timely reminder for whenever someone comes up today with "new" ideas about price controls, more regulation, "social obligations" of companies enforced by government officials, etc. Hope we can learn from history to avoid making the same mistakes today.

great informative book about how much bad things were in National-Socialist Germany.

This is an excellent book which exposes one of the biggest Socialist lies of the 20th Century. This is that the Nazis were a right-wing party. In fact the National Socialist German workers party were in fact left-wing. Every bit of their economic policy was instantly recognizable as a left-wing policy. In fact the only reason the Nazis are called right-wing is because they were so opposed to the Communists. However, the government policies were almost identicle, & for the average Citizen, living in either a Nazi Germany or a Communist Russia, the society created was almost exactly the same.