|
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy | 
 enlarge | Author: Adam Tooze
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $32.95
Buy New: $8.96
You Save: $23.99 (73%)
New (8) Used (13) from $7.41
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 258453
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 832
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 2.3
ISBN: 1589268563
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.943086
EAN: 9781589268562
ASIN: B000YFE8E0
Publication Date: March 22, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Looking under the hood of Hitler's war economy November 19, 2008
George R. Zachar
This book is simply required reading for all WWII buffs and scholars. The underpinnings of Hitlers's entire war effort are mapped out in clear, forthright detail.
An Amazing Achievement October 16, 2008
Tom Perkins (Huntersville, NC USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In 1945, I was an eighteen year old British soldier stunned by the sight of Germany. I saw an incredibly beautiful almost fairy-story countryside, cities smashed to rubble by war, and starved and frozen people determinedly clearing roads and shoring up living spaces. I wondered then and I still wonder about the causes of the war and how a small country like Germany somehow achieved its victories, bore up under seemingly endless land and air attacks, and amazingly produced from ruined factories the finest tanks and the fastest aircraft in the world, including the first rocket planes, V-1 flying bombs and V-2 ballistic missiles. Since then I have read voraciously everything I could find, English and German, and have learned a great deal. However Adam Tooze's book seems to supersede all that I have read before. It is an amazing achievement which pulls together psychological, political, social and military aspects of the Hitler revolution, even including party personality struggles, within a rigorous economic analysis. I shall spend a long time happily re-reading this book.
Seminal Work on German Economy & Expansionist Policy September 20, 2008
David M. Dougherty
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
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.
Brilliant and essential study of the Nazi political economy September 16, 2008
M. A. Krul (Utrecht, Kingdom of the Netherlands)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
 Who Defeated Hitler? April 29, 2008
D. W. MacKenzie (New London CT)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
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.
|
|
|
Web Design, Maintenance, and Hosted by K9Sites.com | |