The German Labor Front

Fascist ideology can manifest as a political movement or regime which values the country's interest over the peoples. Most always it dictatorial with characteristics of a capitalist ideology. The state, in a fascist regime, is often centralized and autocratic with a strong economic and social structure. Though there may initially be a coalition of power, fascist governments move to neutralize any opposition parties- therefore these governments often form one-party nations. The economy of a fascist nation can usually be characterized by elements that are distinct from any other form of governance. First, fascist governments have a vast impact on the economy of the country, opposed to the citizens, because they attempt to exercise control over

In September of 1938, speaking to a crowd of 44,000 laborers at Nuremberg, Hitler declared “Your spades work in the North, in the East and in the West in the service of safe guarding and preserving the Reich. You represent the sublimest motto we know: ‘Help yourself and God will help you.’” Initially marked as a middle ground between workers and industry, the labor front replaced the vast majority of existing labor unions in the nation. The labor front then created subdivisions which attempted to control of virtually every point of a worker’s experience in the country such as leisure and entertainment. One such regulation of the laborers came in the numeration of hours each German worker should have in a year for leisure- provided in full by the state. As previously stated, it replaced the labor unions pre-existing in Germany. This was a direct opposition to Germany’s previous propaganda designed for the left wing of the party. In practice, the Nazi Party did not strive to foster a positive relationship with labor, but rather use the German Labor Front as a means of suppressing dissent from laborers. Most notably, the Hitler and his party developed a highly negative attitude toward strikes. In 1920, Adolf Hitler emphasized the importance of strikes for the political agency of the worker, remarking it was the workers’ only means to exercise their economic power. Rather than honor this sentiment and allow for German labor to keep its rights to its only viable form of political dissent, the Nazi party moved to suppress all labor strikes. Hitler remarked that strikes only “served the interests of men in shadowy rooms behind the scenes” and that only strikes where the work of Jews to highten the inflationary issues of the early 1920s- weakening the economy more. The German Labor front, in the end, served only as