Verschleierung mit Statistik: Kriegswirtschaftliche Desinformation im Nationalsozialismus

Abstract

Veiling statistics: Disinformation in Nazi-Germany about the war economy. In 1939 the German Office for Military-Economic Planning (Reichsamt fur Wehrwirtschaftliche Planung) published its first and only report on the official Census of Industrial Production of 1936. In 1936 the military budget amounted to 11 per cent of German GDP. We constructed an input-output table for 1936 drawing on the archival records of the industrial census. A comparison of the published data of the Office with the records reveals that certain pieces of information were veiled: 1. by concealment (e.g. imports, stocks); 2. by aggregation (e.g. chemicals, iron and steel); 3. by hiding under misleading aggregates (e.g. air craft industry under “construction and others”). No wrong details, however, were reported and the overall aggregate matched the archival record. After the war the misleading figures of the publication crept into official statistics and the historical national accounts compiled by Hoffmann et al.