"HITLER'S NEW ECONOMIC ORDER FOR EUROPE"  
                                                            
 
C. W. Guillebaud. St. John's College, Cambridge.   
                                                            
 
       The Economic Journal, London.  December, 1940.       
 
                                                            
 
 
1. Historical basis for policy is the Hanseatic League which dominated   
the trade of Europe, except on the Mediterranean, for several centuries, with  
the high point in the 14th. The Hansards furnished the capital, the management,   
the transport and the markets. They provided a service where none had before   
existed and they were supplanted by the Dutch and the British who copied their  
methods. And also the herring which for centuries had spawned in the Baltic   
began to spawn in the North Sea, taking great wealth from the Hansards and   
          giving it to the British and the Dutch.           
 
                                                            
 
 
2. The plan of European trade domination was tried by Napoleon but failed  
because (List) it worked "for the benefit of France, instead of basing itself  
e elevation and equalization of the other Continental countr
 
                                                            
 
 
3. What amounted to the old Hansard scheme began to appear in Germany   
again before the first World War. General Bernhardi wanted a Central European  
Federation, with England keeping hands-off. The Mittel Europa plan of Naumann  
proposed a federation of Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and   
s based on a common war and economic doctrine and a regulate
 
                                                            
 
 
4. These plans all merged in the plans gradually worked out by Hitler.   
These plans were helped by the economic sanctions against Italy and the Ottawa  
Conference in 1932 which created the British Empire as an economic unit. In   
November, 1939 in "The Four Year Plan" it was said that "all the countries   
from Scandinavia through Greater Germany, Switzerland and Italy, down to Turkey,  
must reacquire the old Hanseatic basis of life in co-operation with Eastern   
Europe and Russia." The writer declared that Europe had been looking westward   
and now, because of world-wide industrialization, should begin to develop   
                          itself.                           
 
                                                            
 
 
5. The Hitler plan as developed by Dr. Funk, the Minister of Economics,   
in an address on July 25, 1940 contemplates a complete economic but not a   
political organization of Europe grouped around Germany. The agricultural states  
would be discouraged from industry, but the industrial states would be encouraged   
and their activities coordinated with Germany. The objective would be a higher  
and not a lower standard of living, for not otherwise could the satellite states   
be kept politically contented. Berlin would be the clearing house for European  
payments and the mark would be the international currency, but the countries   
would retain their own domestic currencies. The exchange rates would be maintained   
through price controls and an extension of the contract price system for   
ricultural products- as used in buying from the Balkans befo