W.H. Hutt’s Analysis of Nazi Economics: “The Economic Strength of Dictatorships” (1939) and “Economic Lessons from the German Offensive” (1940)

This paper reproduces and contextualizes two unpublished lectures by the South African economist W.H. Hutt from 1939 and 1940 in which Hutt analyzes the economic policy of Nazi Germany. Hutt argued that the Nazis’ early success in the war was attributable to their policy of eliminating anti-competitive restrictions on production by labor unions and capitalists. He believed that this provided a model for the Allies to emulate. This analysis of Nazi economic policy was far too generous to the Nazis in its depiction of Hitler as an advocate for ordinary workers and an enemy of monopoly capital. It also broke from the assessments of Hutt’s fellow neoliberal economists—the German Ordoliberals and Austrian economists, such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises—who were more inclined to classify the Nazis as socialists and collectivists. Hutt’s analysis of Nazi economic policy in 1939 and 1940 contributes to and complicates our understanding of neoliberal economists’ recurring fascination with the possibility of a ‘liberal dictator.’