Daily Inspiration Quote by Hjalmar Schacht

Schacht’s sentence is bureaucratic velvet over a clenched fist: rearmament is treated not as a political choice but as a “necessity,” and once that word is installed, everything else becomes mere logistics. The grammar does the work of propaganda. Instead of admitting “we want to build weapons,” he builds a chain of inevitabilities - armament requires speed, speed requires “foreign exchange,” foreign exchange requires exports, exports require guaranteed raw materials. Each link sounds technocratic, even prudent, as if guns are simply another line item on a balance sheet.

The specific intent is to justify a militarized economic strategy while keeping the moral and diplomatic stakes offstage. By foregrounding “returns” and “assurance,” Schacht frames international trade as a tool of national coercion: export not to enrich consumers or deepen mutual dependence, but to secure inputs for state power. “Raw material supplies” is the quiet tell. Germany’s interwar vulnerability - limited access to key resources and hard currency under the constraints of Versailles-era finance and global markets - becomes the rationale for redesigning the entire economy around strategic procurement.

The subtext is that market normalcy is over. Foreign exchange isn’t for prosperity; it’s ammunition by another name. In the 1930s context, this is the language of economic mobilization under authoritarian aims, where trade policy, industrial planning, and diplomacy fuse into a single project: make the nation sanction-proof, resource-secure, and ready. Schacht’s genius - and danger - lies in how cleanly he turns aggression into “policy.”