The Vampire Economy

Günter Reimann

Here is a study of the actual workings of business under national socialism. Written in 1939, Reimann discusses the effects of heavy regulation, inflation, price controls, trade interference, national economic planning, and attacks on private property, and what consequences they had for human rights and economic development. This is a subject rarely discussed and for reasons that are discomforting,: as much as the left hated the social and cultural agenda of the Nazis, the economic agenda fit straight into a pattern of statism that had emerged in Europe and the United States, and in this area, the world has not be de-Nazified. This books makes for alarming reading, as one discovers the extent to which the Nazi economic agenda of totalitarian control — without finally abolishing private property — has become the norm. The author is by no means an Austrian but his study provides historical understanding and frightening look at the consequences of state economic management.

The Vampire Economy, 1939
Meet the Author
Günter Reimann

Günter Reimann (born Hans Steinicke in Angermünde, 1904–2005) was an expert on finance and currencies as founder and editor of International Reports, a New York–based weekly publication he sold to the London Financial Times in 1983. Prior to World War II, he was a member of the Communist Party of Germany and at the forefront of the underground resistance to Adolf Hitler within Nazi Germany. After fleeing Germany for London, he wrote The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism, published in 1939. In this treatise, Reimann documented how the oppressive rule of the Nazis crushed the autonomy of the private sector through severe regulations and the threat of confiscatory fines for petty offenses.

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References

New York: Vanguard Press, 1939