Communist countries are notably history-minded. Since they see mankind as advancing toward socialism and communism as part of a law-determined historical process, they base their legitimacy in large part on historical antecedents. East Germany, being faced with the opposing claims of West Germany, has been particularly concerned with establishing its historical legitimacy. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) traces its roots back into a distant past, along a road on which medieval peasant risings, socioreligious upheavals, Reformation and Peasants' War, the War of Liberation against Napoleon I, and the revolutions of 1848 and 1918 stand as significant milestones. Perhaps no Communist leadership ever did its homework in history more thoroughly prior to its assumption of power than did the East German leaders. From the mid-1930s on, in their Moscow exile, they devoted considerable attention to the exploration of historical questions from the Marxist perspective; later, Marxist historians and Communist party officials began drawing up plans for historical study programs, textbooks, and monographs in preparation for the day when they would be able to take over power in Germany. They knew it would be important to prepare the way “historically,” too, for the transformation of Germany from a capitalist into a socialist society.

Reparations after World War I can be divided into two categories: non-German reparations, which remain largely terra incognita to the historian, and German reparations, an excruciatingly tangled thicket into which only a few intrepid explorers have ventured. Understandably, most students of twentieth-century history have preferred to sidestep the perils of travel on territory of extreme financial complexity and, as a consequence, a number of misconceptions about the history of German reparations remain in circulation. This brief summary is not addressed to those few brave trailblazers, whose work it indeed salutes, but rather to those many who have assiduously avoided the subject and to the myths about reparations which still adorn studies of the Weimar Republic and interwar history.

The function and importance of welfare in the industrial state is usually inversely proportional to the degree of commitment to progressive social reform. The greater the concern of government with solving the problems of economic dislocation and endemic poverty, the less the need for welfare as an economic equalizer. Conversely, an unwillingness to redress the socioeconomic consequences of industrialization—by allocating an increasing share of the national income to social services—forces a heavy dependence on relief and related financial support systems, if only to avoid the political repercussions of poverty. Welfare policies therefore deserve closer attention as useful barometers of national priorities. An analysis of the economic and political implications of Nazi welfare will not shake the consensus that labor was low on the regime's list of priorities, but it will shed light on its handling of the sensitive issue of labor relations within a command economy. For a state attempting to achieve a political basis for an expansionist foreign policy, the implications of welfare posed a particular problem: how to reap the political benefits of progressive social services—which could justify the necessary labor regimentation—without a heavy commitment of public revenues; that is, how to shift the financial burden of an embattled welfare system not easily dismantled during the economic crisis of the thirties.