Here are some extracts of Hitlers memorandum dated 19 August 1936. Parts of it had ben repeated in various earlier directives, but it all came together after the re-ccupation of the Rhineland
Part I
"I therefore draw up the following programme for a final solution of our vital needs: I. Like the military and political rearmament and mobilization of our people, there must also be an economic one, and this must be effected in the same tempo, with the same determination, and, if need be, with the same ruthlessness as well. In future the interests of individual gentlemen can no longer be allowed to play any part in these matters. There is only one interest and that is the interest of the nation, and only one single view, which is that Germany must be brought politically and economically into a state of self-sufficiency. II. For this purpose, in every sphere where it is possible to satisfy our needs through German production, foreign exchange must be saved in order that it can be applied to those requirements which can under no circumstances be supplied except by imports. III. Accordingly, German fuel production must now be stepped up with the utmost speed and be brought to final completion within 18 months. This task must be attacked and carried out with the same determination as the waging of a war; for on its solution depends the conduct of the future war and not on the laying in of stocks of petroleum. IV. It is equally urgent that the mass production of synthetic rubber should be organized and secured. The contention that the processes are perhaps not yet fully determined and similar excuses must cease from now on. It is not a matter of discussing whether we want to wait any longer, for that would be losing time, and the hour of peril would take us all unaware. Above all it is not the task of State economic institutions to rack their brains over production methods. This has nothing to do with the Ministry of Economics. Either we possess today a private industry, in which case it is its task to rack its brains about production methods, or we believe that the determination of production methods is the task of the State, in which case we no longer need private industry.
The question of the cost of these raw materials is also quite irrelevant, since it is in any case better for us to produce in Germany dearer tyres which we can use, than for us to sell [sic – verkaufen] theoretically cheap tyres for which, however, the Ministry of Economics can allocate no foreign exchange and which, consequently, cannot be used produced for lack of raw materials and consequently cannot be used at all. If we are in any case compelled to build up a large-scale domestic economy on the lines of autarky – which we are – for lamenting and harping on our foreign exchange plight will in any case not solve the problem – then the price of raw materials individually considered no longer plays a decisive part. It is further necessary to increase German production of iron to the utmost. The objection that we are not in a position to produce from the German iron ore, with 26 per cent content, as cheap a pig-iron as from the 45 per cent Swedish ores, etc., is irrelevant because we are not in fact faced with the question of what would rather do but only of what we can do. The objection, moreover, that in that event all the German blast furnaces would have to be converted is equally irrelevant; and, what is more, this is no concern of the Ministry of Economics. It is for the Ministry of Economics simply to set the national economic tasks, and it is for private industry to carry them out. But should private industry believe that it is not able to do this, then the National Socialist State will succeed in carrying out this task on its own. In any case, for a thousand years Germany had no foreign iron ores. Even before the war, more German iron ores were being processed than during the period of our worst decline. Nevertheless, if we still have the possibility of importing cheap ores, well and good. But the future of the national economy and, above all, of the conduct of war, must not be dependent on this. It is further necessary to prohibit forthwith the distillation of alcohol from potatoes. Fuel must be obtained from the ground and not from potatoes. Instead, it is our duty to use any arable land that may become available, either for human or animal foodstuffs or for the cultivation of fibrous products. It is further necessary for us to make our supplies of industrial fats independent of imports as rapidly as possible and to meet them from our coal. This task has been solved chemically and is actually crying out to be done. The German economy will either grasp the new economic tasks or else it will prove itself quite incompetent to survive in this modern age when a Soviet State is setting up a gigantic plan. But in that case it will not be Germany who will go under, but, at most, a few industrialists. It is further necessary to increase Germany's output of other ores, regardless of cost, and in particular to increase the production of light metals to the utmost in order to produce a substitute for certain other metals.
It is, finally, necessary for rearmament too to make use even now whenever possible of those materials which must and will replace high-grade metals in time of war. It is better to consider and solve these problems in time of peace than to wait for the next war, and only then, in the midst of a multitude of tasks, to try to undertake these economic researches and methodical testings too. In short: I consider it necessary that now, with iron determination, a 100 per cent self-sufficiency should be attained in all those spheres where it is feasible, and that not only should the national requirements in these most important raw materials be made independent of other countries but that we should also thus save the foreign exchange which in peacetime we require for our imports of foodstuffs. Here I would emphasize that in these tasks I see the only true economic mobilization and not in the throttling of armament industries in peacetime in order to save and stockpile raw materials for war. But I further consider it necessary to make an immediate investigation into the outstanding debts in foreign exchange owed to German business abroad. There is no doubt that the outstanding claims of German business are today quite enormous. Nor is there any doubt that behind this in some cases there lies concealed the contemptible desire to possess, whatever happens, certain reserves abroad which are thus withheld from the grasp of the domestic economy. I regard this as deliberate sabotage of our national self-assertion and of the defence of the Reich, and for this reason I consider it necessary for the Reichstag to pass the following two laws: 1) A law providing the death penalty for economic sabotage, and 2) A law making the whole of Jewry liable for all damage inflicted by individual specimens of this community of criminals upon the German economy, and thus upon the German people. Moreover, only the performance of these tasks in the form of a Several Years Plan for rendering our national economy independent of foreign countries will make it possible for the first time to demand sacrifices from the German people in the economic sphere and the sphere of foodstuffs, for in that case the people will have a right to demand of their leaders, whom they blindly acknowledge, that they tackle the problems in this sphere too with unprecedented and resolute action and do not merely discuss them, that they solve them and do not merely record them!
Nearly four precious years have now gone by. There is no doubt that by now we could have been completely independent of foreign countries in the sphere of fuel supplies, rubber supplies, and partly also iron ore supplies. Just as we are now producing 700,000 or 800,000 tons of petroleum, we could be producing 3 million tons. Just as we are today manufacturing a few thousand tons of rubber, we could already be producing 70,000 or 80,000 tons per annum. Just as we have stepped up the production of iron ore from 2½ million tons to 7 million tons, so we could process 20 or 25 million tons of German iron ore, and if necessary even 30 million. There has been time enough in four years to discover what we cannot do. It is now necessary to state what we can do".