Hitler successfully dealt out iconoclastic blows not only at the conventional political religions and military ideology of his time but also at the conventional theories of economics of his time. A Germany ruined first by defeat and then by inflation, a Germany filled with the misery of six million registered unemployed and their families was turned by him into a Germany everywhere busily at work, filled with new activity, throbbing with new enterprise. Though this was done as a preparation for war, it could have been done--just as easily--if Hitler had been less evil-minded, as a preparation for peace, and the factories which made guns and tanks could have made harmless useful goods instead. But the fact is that the factories ceased to remain empty, the workers ceased to remain idle, and the wheels of industry began to go round again. Aside from what he stole from the Jews, this was done without importing fresh capital from abroad. But greatly to increase the productive capacity of the country without first greatly increasing the capital of the country was an impossible feat according to the orthodox doctrines of economics. This historic accomplishment exposed the foolishness of those stupid and selfish doctrines which had made money, the physical token of exchange, into the one and only symbol of wealth, which had tried to perpetuate the antiquities and heartlessness of capitalism. Our social and economic ills must be healed. Yet they cannot be healed by the old medicines any more than by the new poisons of Hitler.
-- Notebooks Category 11: The Negatives > Chapter 3 : Their Presence in The World > # 207
