What is the crowd's opinion of
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy?
From 3.5 billion comments
34 reviews of this product found across the web:
That was the first serious history book I loved. The rise in particular is amazing as a primary source, as Shirer was a journalist in Austria before and after the Anschluss. Just don’t put too much stock in what he has to say about teutons.
Also, my French exchange student just about had a conniption when he saw the swastika on the spine on my bookshelf.
Edit: while I’m here I’m going to recommend my current favorite history of WWII, The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. I’ve never found economics so fascinating, or been more thoroughly convinced that Speer should’ve hanged.
Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy is a must read.
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
It is also free in Library Genesis if you know how to search for it.
Not all manpower is created equal. Modern war is so deadly and so fast that mistakes on the battlefield are extraordinarily unforgiving. Many twitter pundits have a tendency to look at the macro picture of things (e.g., Russia has x number of BTGs, low manpower, vs Ukraine's y number of BTGs and plentiful reserves) and assume that victory logically follows.
In general this is poor analysis. War is complex, to say the least - there is no easy formula for victory. Generally speaking the side that can concentrate and use their forces most efficiently to best achieve outcomes that can be translated to political success typically comes out victorious. The US won pretty much every engagement in Vietnam and lost the war. The German Army in WW1 outnumbered the Allied forces before the 1918 Spring Offensive and subsequently lost. Hitler was incapable of marshalling the vast resources and industrial power he had conquered in Europe (see: The Wages of Destruction for a phenomenal, albeit lengthy, analysis of this).
Anyway the losses for Ukraine are no doubt severe. Whether or not this leads to a major collapse in the UA's fighting power remains to be seen.
I specifically said that it isn't that China has zero innovation it's just that the corporate environment in the country is not as good as fostering that innovation as western democracies because their investment and intellectual property is not nearly as protected, in fact has almost zero protections from the CCP.
And sure the Germans were definitely ahead in rocketry, for jet planes they weren't really all that much ahead as so much as desperate so they pressed designs into service that weren't really ready, but in any case the world economies during the 2nd world were markedly different than today with even democracies engaging in heavy handed control that the situation isn't really comparable to today at all. I would recommend Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction for a book that shows the complete and total mess that was Germany's war time economy and also covers by extension a lot of allied economies as well.
He also made huge military expenditures that temporarily improve the economy but are unsustainable unless you use that military to Rob your neighbors.
Anyone who wants to learn about the German economy under the Nazis should read Adam Tooze’s <em>The Wages of Destruction</em>
> Their economic program was very much leftist and anti-capitalist in the epoch
I know they have "socialist" in their title but they oversaw the re-privatization of almost all enterprises that had been made public during the Weimar republic. They set up a heavily militarized plutocracy so they could rearm faster. Unions were broken with no power to collectively bargain, wages were frozen, large corporations who had the support of the government could do literally anything they wanted, and social and labor services of the government were passed off to private enterprise. It's hardly how a Sweden or Denmark works now. The Nazis were really into the social darwinism thing, especially with regards to the economy, Hitler said bureaucratic managing of the economy would preserve the weak and disincentivize the strong. I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by "leftist". I know for some folks on the right, any authoritarian regime is "leftist". And for pretty much everyone, anything they don't like is 'fascist' so semantics are hard. But basically they wanted to quash dissent, privatize everything except military production, prune the 'weak', and build a huge military.
There's a really good book on how the Nazi economy worked: https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208 if you're interested in learning about it. It's a really well written book and a fascinating bit of economic history because while the rest of the world was nationalizing industry, Germany was going the opposite direction.
This is a widely held belief but in reality is a relative myth. Nazi Germany wasn’t impoverished by any means, but Germany under Hitler was only partially modernized, where 15 million people still relied on peasant agriculture to make a living. In 1939 at the war’s outbreak, the combined GDP of GB and France exceeded Germany and Italy by 60%.
Highly recommend this book, a necessary reframing of WW2 Germany from a global economic powerhouse (which it was not) to a mediocre European economy punching well above its weight for only a short period of time: https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
>Hitler kicked them out and put them in camps.
Who is Alfried Krupp? Stop getting your ideology from memes and read a history book. Here's a start: https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
>(i.e. he went to prison)
Actually just a few DWIs but no prison time.
>Doesn't sound like any sort of fascist at this point.
What is a fascist? I'm afraid that's the actual bulk of the movement. It's just bigoted morons with horrible taste and their politics are just wrapped up in worshipping the brute force of the state.
As the blurb says 'an extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today'. That mythology is one of competence.
>It matters very much what Hitler believed, why wouldn't it? Whatever he believed became law, he was dictator, remember?
What he believed and reality were quite often at odds. For example he believed he could defeat the USSR.
All of your sources are bull for the following reasons:
They are not peer-reviewed
They do not draw on peer-reviewed sources.
They avoid any discussion of specific numbers and historical facts, instead focusing on ideology and "how it should have been" as opposed to "how it actually was".
Just read this book, it is the foremost book on Nazi Economy, and should enlighten you better than I ever can.
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
The table on page 641 lists German GDP in 1990PPP equivalent as - $412 Billion in 1941 - $437 Billion in 1944
(Use the 'Search inside this book' feature, with 'GDP' as the search term).
http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Well, "the economic crisis" that Hitler rose to power in was quite unrelated to the hyperinflation crisis. The economics behind Hitler's rise was quite complicated, but at the root, it is driven by a feedback loop of deflation. The precise mechanics of it is a bit too complicated to explain in a post, but this book:
Does a pretty good job of explaining everything.
yeah wages of destruction by adam tooze really spells out in detail how wrong this is. highly recommend
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
pdf, epub, and mobi files are on libgen and also i have them, if anyone's really interested they can pm me
edit: also the last chapter in margaraet macmillan's paris 1919, which tells the story of the creation of the treaty of versailles, basically makes the case that it didn't really start wwii and the germans could easily have paid of reparations because their payments were literally scaled to their gdp or whatever. like they couldn't rearm and pay, but they could pay.
Free market to an extent.
Skimming the wikipedia page doesn't make you an expert on the economy. The markets were not planned, but the government stepped in when the health of the nation depended on it. Ebs and flows were common and expected. Subversion of the nation/the peoples would be dealt with.
Do actual research of the economy, don't be a retarded right winger who sees "socialist" and thinks "holy fuck nazis were left wing communists".
​
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Imagine thinking Nazis were socialists
'bUt It'S IN tHe nAmE'
I'd actually disagree with you when you say "PURE pragmatism", they might have been PURE pragmatism to get power (hence their policies being a grab bag of things that should in theory appeal equally to left and right wing people) but once they were in power...
Their economy was a disaster waiting to happen
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Their hatred of Jews lead to Albert Einstein fleeing to the USA... because when your policies cause one of your countries most prominent scientist to join a country your about to make war on is that outcome is... sub-optimal.
Hell the only thing that matches the moral monstrosity of the Holocaust is what a stupid idea it was....
German General: We've only got so many trains and so much fuel, and we don't have enough winter gear at the front, do you think maybe we could put the winter gear in these trains and ship them to our soldiers at the front?
Hitler: NEVER! We need to use these trains to ship people someplace we can kill them!
(Meanwhile at the Front)
German Soldier: (Freezing to death)
The Nazis were in many ways almost Saturday cartoon villain like in how bad they were at making pragmatic choices....
"Corporatism was created as a critique of socialism as its creators were ex socialists. It was first implemented in Italy under mussolini, but never saw full implementation because of the war. A modified version was used in germany under [removed] and was referred to as "national socialism""
Oh this system.
Have you ever read "Wages of Destruction"?
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Is there a version of this economy that doesn't need to sustain itself by making war on its neighbors and stealing property from political dissidents after arresting them?
I seem to remember a good bit of info about it in this book... https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
> private conversations and diaries
Actions speak louder than words though, and we'll cover that below.
> why didn’t the Nazis simply co-opt the KPD or SPD
The SPD frequently made use of fascist paramilitaries to subdue the KPD. It was actually the communist KPD who stood their ground against the Nazis, but they were the first to be purged when the NSDAP finally gained power. Furthermore, the left-wing of the NSDAP, the Strasserites, were also among the first to be liquidated (or executed) from the party. SO if the Nazis actually were socialists, why purge the left-wing?
> why didn’t Hitler just join the SPD
Simple. Power.
> the Nazis toned down their socialist rhetoric in order to gain support from industrialists
Nope, it's actually the other way around. The Nazis enjoyed great support from the wealthy and the industrialists from the start. The Deutsche Bank for example helped bankrolled the rise of the NSDAP, and several steel and electricity magnates in the Ruhr area supported the Nazis' rise to power. Adam Tooze talks about Hitler's support from the industrialists in his book Wages of Destruction.
> they didn’t double down on their socialist rhetoric in order to sway SPD and KPD voters
They kinda did. In fact they started some welfare programs after they gained power, one of which was the Volkswagen and Autobahn programs that were aimed to provide the masses with cheap automobiles. This, like any of their welfare programs, didn't even materialize, as the vehicle was expensive, the Nazis don't have an industry to support that, and much of the industry was actually spent militarizing the entire country.
Again, check out Tooze's book.
> Also, if the Nazis were capitalist, why didn’t they just privatize everything and gut regulations>
They actually did. They nationalized railway lines, electricity companies, shipyards and the like. Privatization was a word that was coined for the Nazi practice of handing over state institutions to private hands. Aside from handing them over to wealthy donors, he also handed some large industrial estates to his cronies.
This is covered through this wiki page, and again, when it comes to the Nazi economy, Adam Tooze is the best historian for that.
And the fact that Hitler destroyed all the existing worker trade unions in Weimar Germany and supplanted it with a highly employer-centric/state-centric Nazi organization proved that he does not have the workers' welfare at heart, which is the center of the socialist ideology.
> None of this makes sense.
Fascism doesn't make sense, I know.
>Your ideas are not supported by any historian.
>That has absolutely nothing to do with not having enough food.
Insert Clown emoji here
I cannot recommend this book enough if you want to read more on the Nazi German economy.
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Fantastic book on this topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Dan Carlin said this was his favorite book on WWII. The Wages Of Destruction, mostly focuses on the Nazi Economy and some of the politics behind it.
>The point was they wouldn’t have invested in the V2 and would have put that into the nuclear program
And that point is, in a word, wrong. The V-2 program delivered a 2000lb warhead. Early nukes weighed 10,000lb. And it's not just the weight. early nukes were finicky, not reliable enough to go on the heads of ballistic missiles. There are reasons no one was able to build a reliable nuclear ballistic missile until the late 50s.
> the German strategy was majorly flawed, they needed a different one if they were to actually succeed.
Yes, it was. the strategy you've suggested, however, is much more flawed.
>I pointed out they had the capability to do what everyone feared...they did,
No, they did not. They did not have the capability to to that, and they had even less capability to do what you suggested they do. The plan is completely unrealistic, both from a then-sight perspective and from a hindsight perspective. 3 atomic bombs in 1945 do not win the war for germany. Spending 2 billion dollars to get them does ensure they lose the war a lot sooner.
>If they had went with nukes instead of rockets they still would have had the ability to hit the eastern seaboard by plane from from Spain.
No, they would not have. Putting aside the fact that they didn't control spain, it's more than 3000 miles from the US to spain, TWICE the distance B-29s flew to bomb japan. They would have needed a plane the size of the B-36, something the US didn't have until long after the war, and something well beyond the capacity of even the paper studies the germans were doing during the war.
>They didn’t need Russia to conquer England,
Yes, they did. That need was precisely why they invaded russia. Without access to more raw materials, the germans had no hope of being able to master the air and sea around the UK, without that, they were as stuck as napoleon was.
>which under a united German front would have happened in 1941,
No, it wouldn't have. Operation sealion was utterly hopeless. I can point to any of a dozen books on the subject, all with the same conclusion.
>and without PH would have given the US a president that wasn’t FDR to deal with Germany, and likely one that would have ran on a protectionist agenda....possibly even an agenda that would have put us somewhat in line with German interest.
this is just incoherent.
Archives for the links in comments:
- By GunOfSod (en.wikipedia.org): http://archive.is/YLpzy
- By green_swan (en.wikipedia.org): http://archive.is/X75zL
- By hga_another (amazon.com): http://archive.is/kiwwE
I am Mnemosyne 2.1, It's about ethics in archiving ^^^^/r/botsrights ^^^^Contribute ^^^^message ^^^^me ^^^^suggestions ^^^^at ^^^^any ^^^^time ^^^^Opt ^^^^out ^^^^of ^^^^tracking ^^^^by ^^^^messaging ^^^^me ^^^^"Opt ^^^^Out" ^^^^at ^^^^any ^^^^time
I loved The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. It's a great economic history of the Reich, and the role of monetary policy is discussed there as well.
http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Read it. Its a long read, but if you are interested in the subject you will thank me later.
i don't think the reich had an effective long-term strategy. it was very militaristic and essentially required the plunder of other nations.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Just going to leave this here. The Wages of Destruction. It's the accepted view of World War II historians.
>Hitler utilized some socialist policies and talking points, but he also oversaw massive privatization as well
No he didn't. this is a lie.
>as the murder of many socialists including the more socialism-inclined members of the Nazi party (the Strasserists)
Stalin murdered more socialists than hitler could shake a stick at in the purges. killing fellow socialists is a well established socialist tradition.
>The Nazi party may have had the word "socialist" in their name, but they were an explicitly anti-left party, certainly after the Night of Long Knives.
anti marxist does not mean they weren't socialist.
>That doesn't make it socialist or communist.
No, but calling your fucking party that and teaming up with other socialists does.
I understand you're a Marxist, but there is socialism without marxism, its not some black and white, TRUE socialism vs HERATIC socialism. actually I read a book that went in depth on the socialism that was promoted in Nazi Germany recently, you should give it a look
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
You would actually be surprised at how uncompetant the Nazis actually were.
They thought it was a good idea to fight three superpowers at the same time while devoting resources to the Holocaust instead of armaments production.
You should look at Wages of Destruction sometimes which to my understanding is about how the Nazi economy was a house of cards waiting to fail...
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
Or Blitzed which to my understanding is about how the Nazi strategy for doing well early in the war amounted to giving their soldiers meth... which had... less than ideal results as the war dragged on....
https://www.amazon.com/Blitzed-Drugs-Third-Norman-Ohler/dp/1328663795
Popular alternatives to The Wages of Destruction: T...
Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
