No. He entered office convinced of the delusional belief that Jewish elites controlled every major world government, and that Germany therefore must commit itself to a life-or-death struggle. To that end, Hitler spent Germany into the ground, running deficits over 50% of tax income. Most of Germany’s military expenditure was financed through off-the-books loans.

Hitler’s financial manipulations damaged the German economy and before long, the bond markets began punishing Germany. The value of German currency began dropping and the cost of borrowing increased. Even with the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia (and the seizure of those nations’ gold reserves), Germany’s economy was teetering. The German government was beginning to pay off creditors with coupons for tax refunds. Had peace lasted another six months, the entire house of cards would have collapsed.

Even so, did life in Germany improve due to this flood of play money? Yes and no. Many Germans were employed, but the numbers don’t tell the whole truth. Laws were passed to restrict the employment of women, forcing them into the house (and encouraging the birth of more German children) in favor of men. Germans of Jewish descent and those arrested for political crimes were stricken from the citizenship rolls (and thus from unemployment figures).

Did the Autobahn improve lives? Some, but only a few thousand core workers were employed on the Autobahn. Much of the work was completed by prisoner chain gangs or by conscripted youths. These untrained workers, doing rush jobs with substandard materials and tools (the cream going to the military), suffered comparatively high rates of death and injury. When the war began, only 300 or so km of the Autobahn system was what we’d consider a completed modern highway. Much of the Autobahn was one-lane traffic due to rebuilding (again, shoddy workmanship and materials – and Hitler ordered the entire system widened once the Wehrmacht started building larger tanks). A third of the system wasn’t even paved. Not that it impacted most Germans one way or another - Volkswagen only delivered six (not a typo) vehicles before the war started.

Hitler’s Germany was built on propaganda and financial maneuvering. Its successes were artificially magnified (before the war to serve the purposes of Germany, after the war to inflate the magnitude of the Allied victory). Germany did have a number of competent officials and military officers, and it did accomplish extraordinary things in the runup to war and on the battlefield. That should not blind us to the obvious failings of the German military, the Nazi government, and Hitler’s deeply flawed governance and political theories.