Presented for your consideration as the latest argument in favor of Obama's stimulus spending. The best part is that David Leonhardt justifies his little bit of historical meandering on the basis of - wait for it - nuance:

More than any other country, Germany -- Nazi Germany -- then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin... The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn't look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn't become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment. No sane person enjoys mixing nuance and Nazis, but this bit of economic history has a particular importance this week... Yes, stimulus works.

Of course in the case of Nazi Germany stimulus worked because it was driven by the mass confiscation of Jewish property. But whatever.

Almost difficult to understand why people suspect that there's a fascistic impulse beneath the left's redistributory schemes.

References:
* Economic Scene - Stimulus Thinking and Nuance [NYT]
* Jews And The Stimulus Package--Of Nazi Germany [Daled Amos]

Previously:
* Fun with the New York Times Editorial Process (Don't Push/Leave Incomplete/Old Drafts Online Edition)
* NYT Not Even Trying to Pretend to Be Objective Any More
* New York Times Creative Editing Gets Out of Control