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by Gottfried Feder (Author), Hjalmar Schacht (Author), Wilhelm Bauer (Author)
Basic Ideas of National Socialist Economic Policy (Second Edition) presents a carefully assembled collection of foundational economic writings from one of the most consequential political movements of the twentieth century. Centered on the work of early economic theorist Gottfried Feder and supplemented with additional contemporary texts, this volume offers readers direct access to the economic concepts, arguments, and priorities that shaped a distinct and highly structured worldview.
Rather than offering retrospective interpretation or modern commentary, the book allows the original authors to speak in their own words. It traces how questions of finance, labor, property, agriculture, and state authority were woven into a unified economic framework intended to address national crisis, social dislocation, and systemic instability. The result is a coherent presentation of an alternative economic model that rejected both laissez-faire liberalism and orthodox Marxism, proposing instead a state-directed order grounded in production, obligation, and long-term national planning.
This second edition expands the scope of the original work by situating Feder's economic program alongside related period documents and policy statements. Together, these texts illuminate how economic theory was translated into political demands, and how abstract principles were articulated as practical solutions to unemployment, debt, land reform, middle-class decline, and food security. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of agriculture, the restructuring of credit, and the relationship between private property and public responsibility.
The volume also reproduces key programmatic statements in full, enabling readers to examine the economic dimension of the movement's platform as it was formally presented. By preserving the language, structure, and internal logic of these documents, the book serves as a valuable resource for understanding how economic policy was framed as inseparable from broader social and political goals.
Intended for serious readers, researchers, and students of economic history, political theory, and twentieth-century Europe, Basic Ideas of National Socialist Economic Policy offers a rare primary-source window into an influential and highly disciplined system of thought. It does not seek to persuade or reinterpret, but to document and preserve-providing the materials necessary for informed study of one of history's most ambitious attempts to redefine the relationship between economy, state, and society.
