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Walter Rathenau (1867-1922), successful Jewish industrialist and politician, was in charge of the War Raw Materials Department of the Prussian War Ministry. Rathenau’s patriotism and sense of duty prompted him to this position from which he virtually singlehandedly transformed Germany’s economy into a war mobilization effort and coordinated the entire distribution of raw materials throughout the German Reich.
Walther Rathenau and the War Economy
Walter Rathenau concerned himself greatly with the effects of the war on the German economy and society. With the outbreak of the war, he took initiative to introduce far reaching measures to secure the limited resources Germany had at her disposal. He created a vast network of interdependent responsibilities in various branches of the economy. From August 1914 until April 1915, he headed the War Resource Department (Kriegs-Rohstoff-Abteilung) of the Ministry of War with a staff of more than 500. (See letter to Felix Heimann)
In his lecture on Peace-Time-Economy in December of 1916 (Probleme der Friedenswirtschaft) Rathenau concerned himself with the reconstruction and recovery of the German economy. The war brought to Germany the destruction of significant national assets, loss of goods, devaluation of tools, manufacturing and farming. In his assessment, up to one fifth of the national wealth was lost with every year of the war continuing. The second result of the war was the redistribution of wealth and assets, which had caused much social upheaval. The third result was the damage to foreign relations. England had feared that Germany would become economically too competitive. The war revealed the full strength of the German economy, and Rathenau summarized the British position by stating that if the war had fought a couple of decades later, Germany would have been invincible. Rathenau concluded that the major tasks after the war were to rebuild wealth, reconstitute order, and to reestablish economic freedom.
Three weeks after Rathenau’s assassination on June 24, 1922, Lujo Brentano, one of the leading German economists, praised in his lecture, ‘Walther Rathenau and his Service to Germany’ (Walther Rathenau und seine Verdienste um Deutschland), the great idealism and patriotism, Rathenau’s services after the war in rebuilding Germany and reestablishing contacts to the former enemy countries. |
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