Do we need a German-style economic stimulus?

In a worse than amoral article in the New York Times, David Leonhardt writes:

In the summer of 1933, just as they will do on Thursday, heads of government and their finance ministers met in London to talk about a global economic crisis. They accomplished little and went home to battle the crisis in their own ways.

More than any other country, Germany – Nazi Germany – then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.

The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn't look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries.

Although the Times probably assumes we all know what happened with those armaments, what Mr. Leonhardt fails to state is that the arms buildup was a direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles – and it shows the failures of the Western arms inspectors to declare those violations (they weren't all that hard to find). As for lesser unemployment, the Times somewhat artfully skirts the result of firing Jews from public positions such as teaching, and the forced selling of their businesses at distress prices, which resulted in more Aryan employment and more Jewish unemployment — although the latter were likely not included in the national unemployment statistics. After all, they could not legally look for work in the official economy.

As for the 1936 Berlin Olympics which the Times so glibly mentions, Adolf Hitler personally objected to two Jewish track athletes, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, participatin in the Olympics – and the US Olympic Committee (while Franklin Roosevelt was President) acceded to Herr Hitler's wishes, barring them from competition. The first time I read about this, maybe thirty years ago, was in library microfilm archives of the New York Times. We can say that Hitler caused Jewish unemployment for two American athletes overseas, albeit at a nonpaying job.

Recently I wrote a blog piece about the New York Times reaching a new low, in relation to Sarah Palin. But now they have now descended into something bordering on approval for National Socialism in a perverse attempt to bolster the arguments of the Obama Administration. I wanted to think the Times wasn't capable of such a whitewashing of the facts of 1930s Germany. The common norm of post WWII journalistic decency is now gone at the Times. I'm not a German attorney, but a story like this might well be considered illegal in Germany itself, with their strict anti-fascism laws. It definitely would cause some serious criticism in the German press.

The only thing I can say in conclusion is that the Times is now willing to openly display a moral resignation that was typical of the Weimar Republic.