decars1-5, Exercise 2: Did the Autobahn end unemployment?

Model answer (check the method and the figures):

Question: how many people did the programme employ, and how much did that reduce unemployment?

Figures needed:
1. Direct employment on the roads, year by year (peak and average), from historians' estimates based on company and labour records.
2. Total unemployment in each year, noting that the official statistics changed in this period.
3. Employment created by rearmament, the labour service and conscription, for comparison.
4. Indirect employment in the supply industries (cement, steel, machinery), with the method used to estimate it.

Method: put the road workforce next to total unemployment to see its share, and compare timing. Direct employment on the roads at its peak was well under 200,000, according to historians, while unemployment in 1933 was several million, so the roads can explain only a small part of the fall.

Sources: historians' studies of the programme (for example Thomas Zeller's), economic histories of the 1930s, and the records themselves. Propaganda figures should be labelled as claims.