Order policy for the post-war economy: German economic science and the theory of Ordoliberalism in 1939–1945

Abstract

The article examines the history of the theory of Ordoliberalism in the context of plans for the post-war economic reconstruction of Germany. These plans were developed within the Reich ministries and other authorities in cooperation with representatives of German economic science from 1939 to 1945. The paper presents little-known aspects of the applied scientific activities of a group of Freiburg professors, founders of ordoliberal teaching, primarily Walter Eucken and Franz Boehm, who are traditionally considered to be the main figures of academic and intellectual opposition to the Nazi regime in the Third Reich. This article shows the characteristics of an academic expert cooperation of German political economists with state authorities, primarily with the Reich Ministry of Economics, as well as in the Academy of German Law, in particular, in its department – the research group “Political Economy” of the Class IV “On the Study of the National Economy”, and after its official dissolution in 1943 within one of the non-official “Freiburg circles”, the “Erwin von Beckerath Working group”. Particular attention is paid to the problems and contradictions of the creation of a “new national socialist economic science”, failed attempts to popularize the idea of transition to a market-oriented model of the military economy of Freiburg extraordinary professor Adolf Lampe, as well as to the concept of post-war reconstruction of the German economy by the authoritative Nazi official Otto Ohlendorf. Finally, an attempt is made to trace the continuity of German ideas about the politics of order between 1930 and 1940s, and to formulate preliminary remarks on the discussion on the relationship between the theory of German ordoliberalism and the economic views of some authorized senior ministerial officials in the Third Reich.