Four Year Plan

The Four Year Plan was a series of economic measures initiated by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany in 1936. Hitler placed Hermann Göring in charge of these measures, making him a Reich Plenipotentiary (Reichsbevollmächtigter) whose jurisdiction cut across the responsibilities of various cabinet ministries, including those of the Minister of Economics, the Defense Minister and the Minister of Agriculture. The Four Year Plan was part of the alternative governmental structure created by Hitler and the Nazi Party, which included entities such as Organisation Todt and the unification of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the German police forces, including the Gestapo, under Heinrich Himmler. The primary purpose of the Four Year Plan was to provide for the rearmament of Germany, and to prepare the country for self-sufficiency in four years, from 1936 to 1940. Aside from emphasizing the rebuilding of the nation's military defenses, in disregard of the restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles after the German defeat in World War I, the Four Year Plan sought to reduce unemployment; increase synthetic fibre production, undertake public works projects under the direction of Fritz Todt, increase automobile production, initiate numerous building and architectural projects and further develop the Autobahn system. In 1933, Hitler had laid down his foreign policy priorities as "natural antagonism" towards the Soviet Union. In the autumn of 1935, various business leaders complained to Hitler about the overwhelming costs of the rearmament, only for Hermann Göring to speak about the necessity of preparing for the coming war against the Soviet Union. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 put Hitler into an apocalyptic mood in the summer of 1936 as he became convinced that a war with the Soviet Union would occur in the near-future. The diary of Josef Goebbels shows that a leitmotiv of Hitler's thinking in 1936 and 1937 was his conviction that Germany would have to take on the forces of "Judeo-Bolshevism" sooner rather than later.