The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Wages of Destruction analyzes the rise and fall of Nazism from an economic perspective. Some of the seemingly nonsensical behaviors of the Nazi Germany do start to make a little more sense when looked at that one. Germany was suffering after World War 2. Even with some clever management, reparations took a toll on the economy. There was a significant portion of the country still working in agriculture, yet the country had trouble feeding itself. There was a shortage of available labor.

The National Socialists wanted to build up the economy and the military. They also had strong ideological beliefs about their racial superiority. (Somewhat ironically, Hitler viewed the British has being closer to Germans, yet chose to align with the "inferior" Russians.) Americans were viewed to be controlled by the Jews.

The Blitzkrieg attack on France was done in a "lean" fashion. The war would have been over if there were not a quick success. Germany did not have much left in reserve. The success was somewhat lucky. It helped inspire Hitler to engage in future actions.

Hitler knew he must fight the British. He viewed America as an enemy also as they were supplying the British. Germany was fairly resource constrained. More oil, iron and food were needed. Russia, a supposed ally had an abundance of natural resources. The invasion of Russia was hoped to be a quick action (like in France). It would provide Germany with resources that were needed to continue the war effort against the English speaking countries. When the Russians put up a greater fight than expected, Germany was toast.

The extermination of Jews and other undesirable also had its roots in the intersection of ideology and economics. There was not enough food to feed everybody. It would be more productive to feed one person sufficient food than to feed two partial rations. Exterminating undesirables would free up more food for other workers. (When more food was available, these worked could be worked as slave labor.)

There were also other interesting points. Germany had a higher female labor force participation than the UK. Hitler really wanted people to have cars. Many people put down deposits for Volkswagons, only to not get them due to the war and other things.