Mein Kampf
From the economic angle there is this to be said:
The stupendous growth of the German population before the war brought the question of daily bread ever more sharply to the fore in all political and economic thinking and action. Unfortunately people could not make up their minds to adopt the one correct solution, but thought they could attain their purpose in a cheaper fashion. The decision to renounce the acquisition of new land, and in its place to become entangled in the phantasm of world economic conquest, were bound eventually to lead to an industrialization as unrestrained as it was harmful.
The first consequence of grave import was the weakening of the peasant class. As fast as this class declined, the mass of the proletariat in the great cities kept growing, until at last the balance was entirely lost.
Now the violent contrast between poor and rich also became evident. Abundance and squalor lived so close together that the results might be and indeed were bound to be very bad ones. Distress and frequent unemployment began their work on men, and left discontent and bitterness behind as reminders. The result seemed to be a political division of classes. Despite prosperity, dissatisfaction grew and became more profound; things got to the point where the conviction that “this could not go on much longer” became general, yet without people’s forming or even being able to form any definite conception of what ought to have come.
It was the characteristic signs of a profound discontent that were attempting thus to express themselves.
But worse yet were other consequences which the commercialization and industrialization of the nation brought in their train.
To just the degree that the economic system became the ruling mistress of the state, money became the god whom all had to serve, and before whom all had to bow down. More and more the Gods of Heaven were put on the shelf as antiquated and outworn; the incense was burned not to them but to the false god Mammon. A truly pernicious degeneration began, pernicious es-
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