The level of brainwashing in America that good economy = good times is truly absurd. Hiring 100,000 men to build mountains and then tear them down again has much better economic output than war does, because your workers don't all die constantly, while still keeping all those people employed and spending money. Hitler wasn't exactly an idiot, but he wasn't even smart enough to understand that A) being evil is really stupid given how important teamwork is to human successes, and B) he literally could have gotten better results for the German economy by building and destroying mountains.