Thread 17941536

>Nazi Germany was on the brink of economic collapse due to a disastrous accumulation of debt and had to go to war to plunder gold in Poland to pay it all off

This horrible ahistorical impending collapse narrative put forth by Tooze in Wages of Destruction needs to die, it's really just a just regurgitation of British predictions from the 30s and about how the Nazi economy would totally collapse in 2 more weeks and Marxists like Tim Mason and Günter Reimann whose vampire economy narratives were discredited by Richard Overy and other economic historians before Tooze. He wrote a pop history book with a few cherrypicked graphs to fit this idea then leaves out basically all context and won a meme book prize for it so now it's Reddit's favorite book to cite about Nazism.

The ironic thing is that in a way it absolves Hitler and paints him as a utilitarian by acting like WW2 was an economic necessity instead of the natural conclusion of his own ideology. The German economy wasn't perfect by any means, but it wasn't going to imminently collapse, and it's obvious to anyone that Hitler started the war mostly over his ideology and desire to make Germany into some racial pan-Germanic continental autarkic superpower.

If they were going bankrupt and their economy relied on war, why then did all the economists beg Hitler to avoid war? Why are there no primary sources that this was ever a factor for the war, or any postwar testimonies or memoirs saying this? There's simply no evidence whatsoever this motivated Germany to invade Poland and Russia.

>muh Hossbach Memorandum
The economic considerations in the Hossbach Memorandum and Hitler's economic ideology were about autarky, natural resources, food, population, Lebensraum, and becoming irrelevant because they lacked these things. Not some pressing need to pay off debt with stolen gold. Anyone who falls for this is an idiot or is letting their economic ideology blind them to the real history of the war and Hitler's motives.

>>17941536 (OP)
>high effort post

>The ironic thing is that in a way it absolves Hitler and paints him as a utilitarian by acting like WW2 was an economic necessity instead of the natural conclusion of his own ideology.
WWII being an economic necessity was the natural conclusion of his own ideology.

>>17941536 (OP)
>spending 75% of your GDP on defense is totally sustainable bro

>>17941536 (OP)
>It wasn't economy, germans just needed more natural resources, food, and population
so, economy?

>>17941843
Thats not economy, not monetary which is what Tooze argues.
I'm on Richard Overys side here, it doesn't make any sense to attribute ww2 to purely economic reasons.
Economy is fluid, it's not absolute. Even if the germans had not gone to war, the economy can be reversed, a state does not cease. Sure there would have been a period of hyperinflation etc, but I'm sure the NSDAP propaganda machine would have been able to absorb that with some old fashioned blaming jews etc. Germany would have to simply revert back to traditional economy.
Likewise, as OP mention, going to war hurt and puts extreme pressure on the economy, not just production and consumption but keeping millions of the workforce mobilized, plus other factors such as enemy blockade as Germany was still relying on imports, and the circulation of foreign currency which will cease. Basically going to war is a double-edged sword.
We also have evidence that Hitler was prepared to abandon his war plans, and did not even plan for war, not even with Poland. Hid original plan was for Poland to be included in Germanys political and military sphere, secondly, Hitler briefly canceled the invasion on August 25th when Britain and Poland signed their alliance treaty, meaning he was prepared to take another route if war with Poland meant a war with Britain and France.

Was economy a factor? Absolutely. But I don't think it was THE factor.

Honestly he wouldn't have been in debt if they didn't accelerate rearmament, so it makes no sense to say he needed to go to war to fix the economy because the budget deficit existed because he was preparing Germany for war. If he didn't want debt then he wouldn't have been preparing for war.

>>17941536 (OP)
Great book, even if every conclusion isn't agreed on
The information inside is worth reading for anyone

>>17941614
>high effort
nah it has paragraphs but it's still uncritically parroting (non-Marxist) economists
a joke field critiquing a serious book doesn't make said book wrong
>>17942092
>Sure there would have been a period of hyperinflation etc, but I'm sure the NSDAP propaganda machine would have been able to absorb that with some old fashioned blaming jews etc.
economic problems have brought down regimes a lot more secure than Nazi Germany, which itself arose in large part as the result of the depression. I doubt it could've weathered the same problems (but only in Germany) people empowered it to fight while the rest of the world was recovering.
>Honestly he wouldn't have been in debt if they didn't accelerate rearmament, so it makes no sense to say he needed to go to war to fix the economy because the budget deficit existed because he was preparing Germany for war. If he didn't want debt then he wouldn't have been preparing for war.
This part, however, is true

Still a good book, even if Hitler's determinism is overstated in it.

>>17941536 (OP)
Nazis could not maintain their militarization expenditures without conquest. They needed Anschluss of Austria for Austrian iron (as they could not afford to buy it) and they needed the gold reserves and an industry of Czechoslovakia to keep their military complex running. Ditto millions of foreign slave laborers.
German economy would have been safe WITHOUT their military spending. But Hitler couldn't be satisfied without Lebensraum in the East.

>>17942092
I don't think it was purely monetary, but I'm fairly certain that the nazis would not have been able to maintain the rearmament programme without plundering other states. And the real problem was that Hitler had bribed the German military by investing in them. The moment he tried to reverse this, they would turn against him. It was a one-way ride.
Poland would eventually be exploited too, ofc on a less scale if they didn't have a war. They would instead exploited France once they conquer it and once the France was gone they could easily conquer the rest of Europe to prepare all of it's resources for their invasion of USSR.
>going to war hurt and puts extreme pressure on the economy
That was the entire point of Blitzkrieg, to beat an enemy before the can put his superior economy and population ot use. Nobody in Nazi Germany was looking for a war of attrition. You invade a country, conquer it in few weeks and then enslave/loot it so you can prepare for another quick invasion.
>so it makes no sense to say he needed to go to war to fix the economy
You are looking at this the wrong way, Hitler's goal was war, economy and everything else were to be subservient to the war goals.

>>17941536 (OP)
another good book

>>17941536 (OP)
Way to miss the entire point of the book. Tooze hammers home repeatedly that ideology and economic necessity were inseparable for the Nazis because they geared the economy precisely to fulfill their ideological goals. You’re placing a separation where there is none. Hitler is utilitarian only if you accept his basic premise that there’s an international Jewish conspiracy to destroy Germany. Everything follows from that.

>>17941843
They didn’t need those to stave off collapse. They wanted those for strategic reasons.

>>17943411
None of this true. All of 1937-1939 amounted to less than 1% of their GDP.
>>17945424
There is an international Jewish conspiracy to destroy Europe.

>>17941536 (OP)
It's impossible for a state that can print it's own money to economically collapse. Simple as.

>>17946107
I suppose that depends on how you define "collapse". As long as there's people, there's still technically an economy. Even if they have to bring wheelbarrows full of 1 billion Reichsmark bills to buy a single loaf of bread, the economy still exists. Even if people are starving to death in the streets because it's impossible to import anything, their corpses can still be dismembered and sold to other starving people. There's always an economy.

>>17947031
this is just arguing semantics