The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy | Adam Tooze

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy | Adam Tooze | Looong but worth it

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The Wages of Destr...

	The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy Adam Tooze Viking Adult, 2007 - 832 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze?s controversial new book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period to explore how Hitler?s surprisingly prescient vision? ultimately hindered by Germany?s limited resources and his own racial ideology?was to create a German super-state to dominate Europe and compete with what he saw as America?s overwhelming power in a soon-to- be globalized world. The Wages of Destruction is a chilling work of originality and tremendous scholarship that is already setting off debate in Germany and will fundamentally change the way in which history views the Second World War.

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Seminal Work on German Economy & Expansionist Policy

Author Tooze has truly contributed a new perspective on the German economy and Hitler's actions based on material always present in German archives, but less interesting and obvious than military efforts and racial policies. He has done us all a very great service in analyzing a plethora of somewhat mundane details and making his treatise intelligible to all. This is a well-researched and rather large tome, at times somewhat tedious, but absolutely required reading for the World War II historian.

Other reviews have given the outline of this volume, but I wish to add several points that the author points out that may be especially germane to a decision on purchasing and reading this book.

First, the author shows how Germany's drive to expand and Hitler's policies with respect to expansion in the East were the logicial continuation of German expansion from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In some respect it actually goes back to the 13th century, but that is another story. Nonetheless, this expansion was similar to and could be understood by the other imperial powers; Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. By the time Hitler assumed power, Germany possessed no colonies (while all the other listed powers did) and many citizens, Nazi or otherwise, saw this expansion as their country's right and even obligation to spread German culture. That the lower-cultured (in German eyes) Slavs might object, was seen as a problem to be surmounted for their own good.

Hitler then took this position to an extreme where the lower cultured populations were to be eliminated or assimilated. Star Trek fans will understand this as the Borgs' policy. The Germans needed the East's raw foodstuffs, oil, and other natural resources in order to become a great power. The only way to gain them was to destroy the political entities under whose control they were at the time. Ergo, the invasion and destruction of the Soviet Union was a given to have to happen sooner of later. In this respect, Hitler was not so much crazy as merely taking German policy and aspirations to their logical extreme.

In many respects, Germany was not prepared for war with the major powers at any time during Hitler's fuehership. The economy was never actually put on a full wartime footing and competing organizations were granted priorities back and forth based on their success or failure in turf wars.

Germany never achieved mass production of anything -- as soon as a level of production was achieved that seemed to satisfy an organization, its priority was withdrawn and some other project was pushed. Even with successful products such as certain tanks and aircraft, the Germans never stopped tinkering to make them better at the cost of being able to mass-produce them and supply standard spare parts. The result was that much of the German Wehrmacht's equipment was superior to the Allies', but they never possessed them in sufficient quantity to achieve their aims.

The author discusses the efforts by Speer to increase Germany's industrial output and concludes his efforts were only partially successful in spite of seemingly having a great impact. This entire presentation was highly interesting and worth the price of the book by itself.

In conclusion, this is an important work that concludes that Germany was never able to compete effectively with the Allies in war production, even with the captured territories and the use of slave labor. The difficulties it faced and the internal competition that ensured that the resources it had would not be effectively employed contributed in no small measure to its eventual defeat in spite of its efforts on the battlefield.

I recommend the purchase and reading of this work.

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Looong but worth it

I first noticed this book when it was discussed on a WWII military history forum. I bought it and put it on my book shelf to read at some future point in time. Recently, a comment in regards to one of my reviews (on amazon.com) said they'd like to see a review of this book. I was apprehensive to tackle such a scholarly done project, ESPECIALLY since I know next to nothing about economics. I was told to simply begin when the author starts talking about WWII, somewhere past page 400, more than half way through the book. I thought I'd try to read it cover to cover...well, I was fooling myself. A lot of this stuff I will not remember the next day, hell, probably not the next hour. I skimmed through perhaps 10-20% of the book, but as I was skimming the book I kept coming up on small gems and nuggets of information which put things into a better perspective and context.

I cannot do a review of this book in any type of 'traditional' manner, I can only manage a small list of facts, ideas, theories, etc that I found interesting and enlightening. To begin with; the author made an excellent point in the fact that Jewish longing for leaving Germany was being affected by Germany not letting them take much currency with them, this turns out to have been due, to a large degree, to the fact that such a loss for the German currency market would prove a horror for the German economy. This is an aspect of this event I had never thought of, undoubtedly, because I am not an economist but also because no one ever thought of mentioning it. Of course this will not take away from the rampant anti-semitism and perhaps did in fact see an easy way to make money by making Jewish refugees leave practically all of their belongings behind. In either case, this is simply another fact which is worth knowing about.

In regards to WWII; you will regularly hear people mention how the Third Reich was in control of the majority of Europe yet still could not match the production numbers of a Soviet Union, for example, which was down in population, land, and factories after the German invasion of the USSR. Well, it appears that France, for example, depended highly on resources that they were receiving from England and other overseas countries, without it their economy couldn't function to its fullest. Germany, apparently, was hardly being able to keep up to their own needs of raw materials for their highly expanding industry, having another country, or half dozen countries, in need of the same raw materials became more of a hindrance to the German war effort. France and Poland helped by supplying workers when more and more Germans were needed for the armed forces, but many times these foreign workers would not be up to German worker 'quality.'

I greatly appreciate the author going into details regarding Germany's invasion of France. Manstein's plan was nothing out of the ordinary, as the author points out, in concentrating an enormous amount of man and machine power into a section of the front the enemy doesn't consider worth its time is not something that has never been done in the history of warfare. In fact it would not have been done if not for some of the earlier plans falling into enemy hands! The same is true for the attack against the Soviet Union, concentrating the largest invasion force the world has ever seen, and operationally achieving enormous advantages in the breakthrough sectors is what pushed Germany through to her victories in 1941. The Soviets did the same in the latter part of the war, but today they're known as "Red Army hordes" while the Germans are lauded for the military prowess and finesse. As for the war in North Africa it was a sideshow, Rommel's running back and forth with a force he could hardly coordinate or provide logistics for was a thorn in the allies' side and both sides, during the invasion of France and North Africa, used propaganda to highlight Germany's military abilities. The Germans Wehrmacht's military capabilities were played up while the allies could cling to a reason for some of the most spectacular defeats they'd suffer during WWII.

It should also be mentioned that, contrary to popular belief, Germany employed a tremendous amount of females throughout their industries, heavily in agriculture. Thus the idea that if they would have only used more women they would have had an easier time is a myth. Added to this should be the fact that due to Nazi Racial policies MILLIONS of workers, mainly Jews and Russian POWs, were lost to murder, genocide, mass starvation, disease, etc throughout the first few years of the war. It was only when there was a tremendous enough need for more workers did these two groups, as two examples, begin to be used more in the German wartime economy.

General PlanOst is well known, but here it is presented, as well as its history, with excellent detail. It was quite interesting to see how during the war the Wehrmacht was cut off from its food supplies coming in from the Reich and made to live off the land, as if what they were doing there for the past 1-2 years wasn't enough, now they would be taking away whatever food they found from an already poverty ridden and starving population. The General Government was then made to send Germany food supplies, up till then they had relied on food FROM Germany to keep the population on rations. Suffice to say, all of these measures led to massive starvation, not something that concerned the German administration as long as their troops and Germany proper were/was fed.

The 'myth' of Speer was interesting to skim through, I'm not that familiar with this particular 'myth' so I didn't want to go into SO much detail, but according to the author the 'miracle' he was responsible for was a long time coming, he simply arrived at the right time and at the right place. Milch was also a man one should pay attention to as, apparently, he was the one responsible for the Luftwaffe's tremendous numbers, rather than Speer.

These are only a few examples of the information you'll find within the pages of this tremendous work. Definitely a new look at the war, a new context for what you might think you knew is presented, very much worth your time (even if you skim through the first few chapters like I did!).

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Used like new

I couldn't be more pleased with the book. It is like brand new. It came in a reasonable time frame as predicted. I'm very pleased. I ave not had time to start reading the book as yet.

Brilliant and essential study of the Nazi political economy

As the rave reviews already indicate, Adam Tooze has certainly put himself in the top ranks of historians of the modern period with this book, "The Wages of Destruction". In this brilliant analysis of the political economy of the Dritte Reich, from the origins in Weimar to the end in 1945, he overthrows many old myths and clears up many confusions, all the while speaking with the authority of a historian in complete command of all the necessary information and insight into his sources.

Tooze manages, insofar as that can be said, to make the insensible sensible, and to show the rationality and pragmatic response to political economic pressures on the part of the National-Socialist government in Germany. Instead of relying on cheap psychological analysis of people like Hitler and Goering, or simply declaring their policies to be "ideological" and then failing to actually explain how they were possible, Tooze shows in a tight narrative series of successive steps how each move towards the goals of the Nazi government led to the next act in this murderous tragedy.

Tooze's political economic analysis shows us the essences of the National-Socialist government's support and policies. As he shows, the Nazis relied on two classes for their support: industrial capital, in particular heavy industry, which sought to expand control over raw materials in Europe and to profit off an armaments boom while seeking to destroy the French and British competition (as well as the Communists generally), and on the other hand the very large group of smaller and middle level farmers in Germany, which sought an expansion in the available land. As Tooze shows, German development by the time of Weimar had been very uneven, with the living standards being significantly below the level of Western Europe generally, with a very inefficient and underdeveloped agriculture (which due to its low productivity therefore needed more land than British farmers did, for example), and at the same time a very strong recent industrial base. In some senses, Germany in the Weimar time was closer to early 20th century Russia than to the UK or the US of the 1920s.

The national-socialist ideology devised by Hitler came as the 'solution' for the problems of both these classes. Tooze shows extremely usefully how Nazism is really the ultimate in colonialism and settlerism; the entire ideology and strategy of Nazi Germany was aimed at annexing and then settling the lands of Eastern Europe, which were considered the necessary living space (Lebensraum) for the German people, whose population density, particularly in agricultural areas, was much larger than in France or the UK. This in turn would require the removal, literally, of the original population of that area. The comparisons to Manifest Destiny are extremely clear, even so much so that Hitler himself compared the future of the Slavic peoples after German settlement to the "Red Indians". At the same time, the goals of destroying the Communists on the one hand and 'removing' the Jews etc. on the other would ensure that the non- or anti-settlerist influences were permanently removed from the German domains. To achieve this goal, massive war would have to be waged, to defeat the main competitor on the continent on the one hand (France), and to conquer and annex the lands in the East on the other hand.

Tooze shows how this logic of settler imperialism went further and further, as the enormous investments required for German rearmament in turn required a clean break with all existing diplomatic and trade relations, while at the same time fostering a need to wage more and more war in order to keep realizing the enormous profits for the armaments industry. Similarly, the quest for raw materials to guarantee the German Imperium-to-be could only succeed through warfare, which in turn required more raw materials to produce the necessary armaments. All of this took place at the expense of both the mass of the German population, whose living standards were low and became lower, and of all the other peoples of Europe, which were ruthlessly subjugated or even destroyed. Tooze shows that the 'social projects' of the Nazi regime, in the style of the New Deal, were in reality mostly showpieces with little real content or effect, and that the economic boom of the mid-1930s and the decrease in unemployment was because of the immense investments in weaponry.

Finally, Tooze also shows how utterly ruthless the logic of settlerism really was when followed to its final goal; not only did this entail the destruction of perceived internal anti-settler elements, in the form of the Holocaust, but it led to a much larger 'Hunger Plan' which was designed to destroy the great majority of the population of Eastern Europe altogether through famine. Through the strength of the Red Army, the German leadership never had the chance to fully put this into effect, but had it succeeded, the Holocaust would only have been a smaller element in an even larger crime. Such is the unimaginably murderous policy of settlerism.

Despite the very heavy statistical material and the in-depth economic analysis, Tooze's contribution to the history of modern Europe is never boring at any point. The narrative and vision of this book is compelling and authoritative, and Adam Tooze's work is likely to be the definitive work on the ultimate settler state for a long time to come. I cannot recommend this book enough - if one reads only one book on Germany and WWII in one's lifetime, let it be this one.

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Who Defeated Hitler?

People are still fascinated by Nazi Germany even Sixty three years after the surrender of that nation. One of the questions that history buffs continue to ponder is why Hitler invaded the USSR? How could he have been so foolish? In hindsight Hitler's attack on the USSR might seem foolish. However, we must consider two things. First, The decision to invade was made with foresight, not hindsight. Second, we do not all have 20-20 hindsight. Many of us err in thinking that the Germans had no chance against Stalin.

Tooze makes an interesting case that the invasion of the USSR was not as foolish as many think it was. Hitler needed grain, oil, coal and other materials from the USSR to fight against the UK and USA. Hitler turned his most effective armed service, his army against what appeared to be the weakest opponent: the USSR (p455). Germany had 2.5 times the per capita GDP of the USSR. Invading the USSR was critical because Western European industry was dependent upon exports, and the British had cut them off.

Tooze challenges the myth of Soviet invincibility. The fact of the matter is that the Germans did have a real chance of defeating Stalin, as they had defeated the Czar in World War One. German industry was able to produce enough to fight against the Soviets, but not while also fighting the USA and UK. The Germans also took advantage of the fact that Stalin has massed much of his forces on his Western border with Hitler. The surprise attack on June 22 1941 did lead to stunning victories, and the USSR nearly collapsed by the end of that summer. Had Hitler won against Stalin, he would have gained unrestricted access to resources he needed to fight the USA and UK.

Tooze also challenges the idea that Albert Speer brought the full force of German industry to bear in Germany's war effort. German industry was not sufficiently well developed and supplied to match the war production of the UK and USA. Add in Soviet production, and there was really nothing that Speer could have done. Tooze claims that Speer actually did little to increase production. Germany did achieve some economies of scale with its mass production, but this efficiency increased quantity at the expense of quality. For instance, the Germans achieved scale efficiencies in producing the obsolete Heinkel 111 bomber.

Tooze recognizes that it was Hitler's declaration of war on the USA that "sealed his fate" (p668). Even if Hitler had vanquished Stalin, he would have faced a long term fight against the UK-USA alliance. Ultimately, Hitler was defeated by his own ideology. Hitler foresaw the emerging Globalized US centered economy, and recognized that Germany was heading for a minor role. Ideology clouded his worldview and made world war seem necessary. Or, you might say that his hatred of the Jewish people distorted his foresight regarding Globalization. Hitler had no real reason to fear the US as the central figure in Globalization.

If there is any one problem with this book its that Tooze overestimates the importance of economic factors in deciding the war. While it is true that the US and UK had massive economic advantages over the Nazis, this does not mean that the US-UK could not fail with its invasion of Europe. Eisenhower himself thought that the Nazis could have stopped him, had they used V1 rockets against the Normandy invasion, or if they had developed their jet aircraft sooner. So the Nazis could have made up for their economic defeciencies with some scientific advantages. Fortunately, the Nazis did not take full advantage of their scientific advances.

Hitler played some of his cards right, but the deck was stacked so far against him that you have to wonder why he attempted global domination. While the Germans applied their resources to winning the war effectively, the overall strategy of defeating the USA and UK was simply not feasible. The Nazis would have never crossed the Atlantic, and the English effectively cut Germany off from the overseas resources it needed. What we can draw from this is that the English played a crucial role in containing the Nazis, and US industry overwhelmed them.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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