[Transcript]
Strikingly similar remarks to Ilgner’s were made barely four months later by Erich Neumann, the [Fascist] Secretary for the Four‐Year Plan. On 25 January 1941, he drafted a memorandum entitled ‘Towards the Question of Future Economic Policy in the South‐East’.
According to him, the penetration of German capital and industry was only natural. Although Germany overall had an interest in improving the living conditions of its neighbours, any increase in standard of living and purchasing power was not to be allowed in the future if it came at the expense of the surplus exports of the goods on which [the Third Reich] relied.
The only reason why those countries could provide an export surplus of the goods which [the Third Reich] needed was their low average consumer spending, which in Yugoslavia, as he stressed, was seven times lower than in [the Third Reich]. The average consumption of meat and bread in Yugoslavia was one third of that in [the Third Reich] and according to Neumann it should stay that way.
[Fascism’s] task was not to increase the living standard of the region, but to help with technical improvements which could increase production and yield. Any independent economic development of these countries was to be prevented from now on, they should be kept in the status of raw material and foodstuffs suppliers to the Reich and their surplus population used as migrant workers in [the Reich].
Such a policy would ‘keep us [the Germans] from danger […] that the consuming power of the people from the south‐east grows faster than their production abilities, which would leave only smaller and more expensive leftovers for our import needs’.³³
(Emphasis added. Source.)
gotta admit, i did not expect this from the third reich of all governments. this seems bad.