Hello,
Very often I read on reddit (or even in some newspapers) that Hjalmar Schacht was a sort of godsend to nazi Germany, as he single-handedly solved the economic problems left by the Weimar Republic and consolidated the economic basis of the Reich, leading to a close to zero unemployment, facilitating the rearming of Germany, etc. Now I am a bit cautious with these hagiographic descriptions as I noticed that the influential men of Nazi Germany tend to be overly praised on the internet, while they are not as talented as their "legend" pretends (Erwin Rommel being the first one that comes to my mind). Hence here are my questions regarding Hjalmar Schacht:
Did he actually "save" Germany in the 30's and accomplished a sort of miracle?
Was he actually such a visionary that he saw solutions that nobody else saw?
Hjalmar Schacht was an economist of the Weimar Republic and for the Nazis until his dismissal in 1937 due to his opposition to German rearmament. He was known for working with or developing several schemes that the Germans used throughout the interwar period.
The first scheme he was known for was the introduction of the Rentenmark. The currency of the Weimar Republic was normally the Reichsmark, but several things happened after World War I that caused great turmoil in the German economy. Many Germans considered the reparations to be a great outrage (as reparations are paid in "defeat," and in the view of many Germans, Germany had not lost the war). To that extent, the Germans were willing to sabotage their own economy in an attempt to get the reparations waived or dismissed, due to a supposed German inability to pay it. This is all documented in Sally Marks' "Myths of Reparations."
One mechanism of their attempts to sabotage the reparations was to print large amounts of their currency. While there were several relatively sane ways that the Germans could purchase the gold and goods necessary for reparations, such as issuing bonds, raising taxes, or even taking on foreign currency debt, the Germans instead deliberately chose to print Reichsmarks, in an effort to wreck the German economy, thus bringing the Entente to the table to renegotiate the reparations. And it worked-the Dawes and Young Plans, created in the wake of the ensuing Weimar Hyperinflation, allowed to Germans to restructure and reduce the amount of reparations. This was of course at the expense of two years of German economic growth, which resulted in gross wealth destruction and was only fixed by the introduction of the Rentenmark. The Rentenmark, which Schacht was one of several economist that developed the scheme, was a substitute Reichsmark that used German land (real estate) as collateral, much in the lines several other countries used gold or silver to back their currencies. This was introduced into the German economy and helped to restore stability.
It should be noted that during this time, Schacht was only one of a handful of economists and political figures that assisted in the Weimar Republic's return to economic growth. Hans Luther and Karl Helfferich were the main economists responsible for the Rentenmark.