Statistical demand-pull in 1930’s U.S.A and Germany: Good will, welfare and warfare

Abstract

In 1994 Jan van den Ende observed, “During the 1930s more and more statistics were being carried out on punched-card machines. An important reason was the increasing complexity of the statistics.” Works by acclaimed social scientists Evans, Tooze, Mason, E. Black, Aly, Bernstein, Whitman, D. Black, Schivelbusch and others are cross-checked to answer the question: “How did U.S. New Deal and Third Reich welfare/relief programs increase demand-pull for complex statistical data; setting the stage for epoch shift towards the digital age?” Third Reich Germany and New Deal America provides a unique historical-comparative viewpoint into how two governments, with similar social relief goals but different statistical establishments, increasingly demanded more complex statistics for implementing relief programs, with drastically different results. Donald Black’s theory of law theoretically frames the findings of this comparative study of U.S. New Deal and German “Aufartung durch Ausmerzung” programs.