Product Description

This chilling, fascinating new book is the first fully to get to grips with how Hitler's Nazi empire really functioned. There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics - it was Hitler's obsession and the reason the Nazis came to power in the first place. The Second World War was fought, in Hitler's view, to create a European Empire strong enough to take on the United States - a last chance for Europe to dig itself in before being swept away by the USA's ever greater power. But, as "The Wages of Destruction" makes clear, Hitler was never remotely strong enough to beat either Britain or the Soviet Union - and never even had a serious plan as to how he might defeat the USA. It took years of fighting and the deaths of millions of people to destroy the Third Reich, but effectively World War II in Europe was fought in pursuit of a fantasy: the years in which Western Europe could settle the world's fate were, by 1939, long past. This is a major book by a major author and will provoke an enormous amount of controversy and debate.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121499 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 832 pages

Sunday Telegraph
`This book will change the way we look at Nazi history ... nothing less than a masterpiece. Rejoice, rejoice, for a great historian is born'

New Statesman, Books of the Year
`A remarkable and gripping revision of the history of Nazi Germany'

The Times Higher Education Supplement
`This is a great book - one of the most important to be written about the Third Reich in years'

Customer Reviews

Makes sense of what seemed senseless
Heavy going, especially to begin with when dealing with the inter-war period, although this is essential to understand why the war started when it did and not three years earlier or two years later.
Full of surprising insights, the sort of thing you would never normally think of, such as how shortage of railway wagons because of thousands being required to supply the Eastern Front disrupted the German industrial economy at home. I've never heard this mentioned before and yet, when you think of it, it's obvious.
The inescapable and ultimately insoluble problems caused by such things as shortage of labour, food (seemingly the most severe shortage and the one which forced the regime into apparently insane gambles ) and even imported cattle feed.
Or the fact that the French economy was heavily dependent on coal imported from Britain and therefore unable to make much of a contribution to the German war effort after the fall of France when this supply was cut off.
Makes sense of the Swedish supply of iron to Germany (they depended heavily on German coal - as did the Swiss).
It also makes it clear that area bombing was far more effective than recognized at the time or admitted since.

This book is good enough to make you realize just how poor most of the other 'histories' of this period are. It actually makes it obvious that many of the 'historians' are merely stating personal opinions or repeating received wisdom. Not really history at all, more like journalism.
Presumably the sheer scale of primary research needed to uncover the truth has put many writers off. Tooze certainly seems to have done the job properly.

The definitive history of Nazi Germany
The author has produced what is surely the last word in explaining the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. This is an economic history, and this allows the real story of the Third Reich to be told. Like all history, the prosecuting of war really depends on the ability to raise and sustain a war machine - this has been the case for most of history. By concentrating on this fundamental fact, the book clarifies the actions of the Third Reich and it's leaders. Essentially, Germany in 1920 had the choice of either accepting it wasn't a major power and becoming a satellite state of the US, living as an exporting economy, or going down the road of war and becoming a world power and exploiting Europe as a conquered empire. Many in Germany at the time refused to accept the former, and through Hitler they made there bid to change the course of history. The author is careful to point out that although this course was fundamentally unsound in view of Germany's real position, there was a lot of logic behind the Nazis world view. Germany was critically dependent on imports of food and materials, it owed huge amounts of money to the US, and had foreign troops on it's soil. Hitler offered what looked like a credible alternative to the man in the street.
The book carefully explains how the Nazis built their war economy, and why it was used at the time and the way it was. Whenever it looked like Germany was losing it's advantage through early mobilisation, war was the only alternative to slow strangulation by naval blockade and air warfare.
After the entry of the US into the war in 1941 by offering aid to the UK, the Nazi leadership knew it had to win the war by 1942. (This thinking made the invasion of the USSR inevitable to the Nazi leadership, who were all to aware of the potential of strategic bombing).
To the Nazi leadership, a showdown with the US/UK was always going to happen, and it was better to happen on their own 'best terms' - i.e. before the US and UK could build an air fleet to destroy German industry. If all potential threats on the continent could be eliminated first, the Luftwaffe could then be built up into a force to protect the air over Europe.
One interesting thing the book also points out is the importance of the UK's blockade of Europe. Basically, Europe is dependent for imports of everything - food, materials etc. With the UK's naval blockade the economy of France (and most of Europe) basically collapsed by the end of the war, with Germany relying on the plundering of conquered countries (and slave labour) to keep financing the war. The rules of war in Europe have not changed since Napoleons time. An effective blockade of the continent soon causes huge problems, forcing Germany or whoever to look at desperate measures (invading Russia) to 'break out' of the blockade and find alternative sources of food/materials.
The author also explains the timing of the holocaust, and the timing of this too has an economic basis - food. In 1941/2 Germany found itself with too many mouths to feed and blockaded. The Nazis decreed that Germans would be the last to starve (as they had in 1918).
Unbelieavably it decided to kill millions of people in Poland to free up food, and then to mass starve the population of the western USSR. There was a plan to starve to death 20 million people as the policy of the German armed forces. This was planned and coordinated at the highest levels of both civilian and military authorities. A terrible story.

Great account of the Third Reich's economic practices
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!).