This is largely a false assertion according to Tooze. He contends that women already were integral to the Germany economy and already employed in large numbers in agriculture, so they could not simply be shifted to industrial production…
Hi Nickdfresh, we cant get every thing right, even today we are treated like mushroom’s :rolleyes:
Maybe looking a little harder since their are hundreds of listings for it for sale which give accurate descriptions of it - if you dont wish to pay though you could always read it here
[QUOTE=leccy;190674]Maybe looking a little harder since their are hundreds of listings for it for sale which give accurate descriptions of it - if you dont wish to pay though you could always read it here
Hi leccy, I just typed in Adam Tooze, and the first thing that came up was: “Adam Tooze/Department of History”. which said on Wages of Destruction:
Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy appeared with Penguin in 2006. It provides a (novel) account of the Third Reich viewed from the perspective of the regime’s efforts to harness the German economy for its bid for continental hegemony. It won both the Longman and Wolfson prizes, was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper and H Soz Kult prizes, was an Economist book of the year and has been translated into German, Italian, Portugese and Bulgarian. In Germany it has been adopted by the Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung.
To me, I have no need to look a little harder, unless the statement made by the Department of History, his false/lie, in their information on Wages of Destruction.
Novel you took to mean one thing, it also has a different meaning.
Novel - New or of a type unseen before - It was the first book to look at the whole of the German economy and background using the original German sources.
You kept asserting that more manpower equalled more equipped troops - I pointed out that Germany could not have equipped nor supplied more troops.
During Barbarossa the Axis reserve was not used so no need for more manpower then (many units were equipped with Czech, French and British vehicles and equipment from other occupied nations much of it not suitable but used to make up for the shortfalls of German production ability).
Units in 1941 (indeed even in 1940) outstripped their supply lines, by the time the extra manpower could have been used in late 1941 (dont forget only a relatively small potion of the 6 million Jews would have been available and fit for service) the Germans were struggling to provide enough horses and vehicles to keep even the reduced forces supplied and equipped - more manpower would do nothing except cause greater supply problems (and the amount available at that particular time would not have been very great).
The Germans could not increase production (to supply or equip the extra troops) significantly as the economy was such a precarious balancing act that to increase production in one area they had to decrease in another due to lack of steel, coal and oil (the main resources but copper and aluminium as well as others had to be rationed), allied bombing had a large effect on production and transportation as well despite many claims.
The Germans lost in Normandy and Bagration as they had too few mobile troops to counter, too little firepower (artillery and armour), no significant naval force and too little airpower (there were in the east too many units that were Div’s on paper only, being undermanned and under equipped, in the West they were heavily reliant on captured artillery and even tanks captured in 1939/40 to equip the static divisions that could not be provided with their own transport).
No matter how bad the situation became for the Axis (they pulled troops from every other theatre as and when they decided they needed them more) the forces in Scandinavia stayed (on their surrender in 1945 a garrison of 400,000 was in Norway and over 200,000 in Denmark), Norway saw little fighting at all - those troops were kept to fight an imaginary invasion after the scares the British commando raids gave (Like Vaasgo in 1941).
Novel you took to mean one thing, it also has a different meaning.
Novel - New or of a type unseen before - It was the first book to look at the whole of the German economy and background using the original German sources.
I ask myself, is it a (novel) account, meaning, a (1-new look to what did happen), or is it a (novel) (2-fictional account on what did happen).
(novel) account). IE, a book length story. (3-A fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that is unfolded by the actions, speech, and thoughts of the characters). (4-A fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism). (5-Novel: a book lenght story).
(6-Novel: of a new kind a novel experience). (7-Nov’el: a fictitious tale in book form), (8-nov’elist: a writer of novels). (9-Nov’el: a new recent)
After the Nazi takeover of power the re-armament became the topmost priority of the German government. Hitler would then spearhead one of the greatest expansions of industrial production and civil improvement Germany had ever seen.
Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, one of the most influential Nazi figures of the time, and Hjalmar Schacht, who, while never a member of the Nazi party was an initially sympathetic economist, introduced a wide variety of schemes in order to tackle the effects that the great depression had on Germany, were the main key players of German rearmament policies.
Dummy companies like MEFO were set up to finance the re-armament; MEFO obtained the large amount of money needed for the effort through the Mefo bills a certain series of credit notes issued by the Government of Nazi Germany.Covert organizations, like the Deuthe Vertehrsfliegerschule Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule were established under a civilian guise in order to train pilots for the future Luftwaffe. [Although available statistics don’t include non-citizens or women, the massive Nazi re-armament policy almost led to full employment during the 1930s. The re-armament began a sudden change in fortune for many factories in Germany. Many industries were taken out of a deep crisis that had been induced by the Great Depression.
Some large industrial companies, which had until then specialized in certain traditional products began to diversify and introduce innovative ideas in their production pattern. Shipyards, for example, created branches that began to design and build aircraft. Thus the German re-armament provided an opportunity for advanced, and sometimes revolutionary, technological improvements, especially in the field of aeronautics.
The Spanish Civil War in1936-1939 would provide an ideal testing ground for the proficiency of the new weapons produced by the German factories during the re-armament years.
Read the book and find out that the word ‘Novel’ is used in its adjective form and not as a noun - it was meant as New and not seen before - it questioned the previous thoughts and found much to be wrong - now widely adopted as the deifinitive work on the Nazi economy.
None of what you have written explains how Germany would have been able to equip or use these extra troops being as it could not properly equip and supply the forces it actually had. Even with the production from the occupied and allied nations Germany could not provide the transport to move the materiel it was short of to the troops it had too few of, more troops at the front would not equate to more firepower (nearly a million of the troops earmarked for Barbarossa were not used until much later after the initial rush the biggest problem was transportation and lack of supplies, same as in 1940 in France).
You state what was already said - massive public works spending and rearmament programs brought in full employment (including a larger percentage of the female population than in the UK), those programs were bankrupting the country and it was only by expansion and stripping other countries could they continue with that course (of course the stripping was often called loans - as in the Greek compulsory War Loans made to Germany after occupation).
And just to add, more men called up for combat meant less skilled and experienced workers in the factories - all the more critical in an industrial state that often lacked uniformity of standards in mass production that existed in -say- the United States, and perhaps Britain and Canada as well. This certainly crossed over to agricultural production. Despite this, a large portion of the Heer was over 40 in 1940!
Also, Germany ended up garnering almost no useful armaments’ production in the occupied countries. And technical machines like aircraft were only produced in the Reich and could only be effectively produced there. Efforts to utilize the extensive and technically sophisticated aeronautical industries of occupied France and The Netherlands only met with folly…
You state the word BANKRUPTING, I use the word: BANKRUPTCY
Britain transfer £43 million to the U.S. the final payment on a debt used to finance the World War II defeat of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
The U.S. extended $4.34 billion in credit in 1945, allowing Britain to stave off bankruptcy (BANKRUPTCY) after devoting almost all its resources to the war for half a decade. Since 1950. Britain has made payments on the debt, the final payment of which is worth $84 million, at the end of every year except six.
Maybe we should be asking the question, what was Churchill’s Biggest Mistake.
I wait for you reply
I agree with what your saying, we had the same problem’s in Britain, do you increase you military force, and reduce your labour force, my Father went into WW2 (BEF), a month or two after coming home from India, my mate’s Father was a collier, and they would not let him join up at the local recruiting office , so he and his mate walked to another one miles away, and joined up there.
And if every other coal miner in Britain had done the same, Britain would have lost the war.
My father was in a protected occupation during WWII and was in the militia at the same time, but was not permitted to serve overseas. He also tried to join the navy and army for overseas service, but was rejected when his background was discovered.
I understand the frustration, and an unexpressed degree of shame, my father and others in protected occupations suffered when most of their mates enlisted for overseas service and generally served and some were wounded and some died on active service, but on a national manpower planning basis it was necessary and, indeed, critical to keep certain skills in the domestic economy.
It could be argued that those in protected occupations were guilty of a serious offence against their nation by enlisting for overseas service and thereby depleting their nation’s ability to produce the sinews of war, as with all coal miners enlisting and denying the nation the ability to produce coal, which in turn would have prevented the production of steel and many other things necessary for a war economy.
It’s not a contention, it’s a fact.
Farming on continental Europe generally involved women as workers making a substantial contribution to family farm work in addition to their household duties. I don’t have sources now, but I researched this closely many years ago for a university essay (which I’m pleased to report got first class honours at a decent university) on the domestic front in Germany in WWI and there were great differences between women’s contribution to farm work in Germany and Britain and the relative abilities to release women from farm work or to use them to replace men taken from farms. There weren’t great structural changes between WWI and WWII to alter the difference.
The direct contribution to farm labour by women was much less so in Britain, and certainly in England, than Germany so that there was a reserve of female labour available on those farms when men left for military service. The same in Australia, and probably America.
And if every other coal miner in Britain had done the same, Britain would have lost the war.
By mid-1943 the coal mines had lost 36,000 miner’s, and It became obvious the miners needed to be replaced. The government made a plea to men liable to conscription, asking them to volunteer to work in the mines instead, but few accepted and the shortage continued. By December, Britain was becoming desperate for a continued supply of coal both for the war effort and winter at home. It was decided that some conscripts would be directed to the mines.
Every one did their bit, and in the end every thing turned out OK.
I’ll guarantee that the productive capacity of conscripts with no mining experience would have been a small fraction of the experienced miners they replaced so, from an economic and war production basis, it would have been much better to retain the experienced miners.
The reverse of this occurred in Australia in 1944 when we had an army far larger than could be used in projected operations cooling its heels in Australia, thanks to MacArthur’s determination to make the final parts of his thrust to the Philippines an all American effort. From memory, somewhere around 100,000 troops were released, with priority being given to those who had skills in various protected occupations, notably farming and agriculture which had suffered to some extent from the loss of experienced labour.
I can see why.
I’d rather take my chances on the worst beach on D Day than go down a coal mine every day for months, let alone possibly years.
Right. Without checking Tooze’s Wages, he goes into the agrarian state of German agriculture and economy in general to take sort of a contrarian position on the typical notions of German industrialization and of the Nazi Party’s view of technology in general. The German farmers traditionally had a huge influence on all gov’ts including the Weimar, and the Nazis took great pains to appeal to rural agrarian interests and win them over. And while German industry was formidable with the likes of Krupps, Siemens, and Daimler, the majority of the economy was still agrarian based in the 1920’s and 30’s and furthermore the German farmers lacked the access to the mechanization taking place in Britain and in North America in general making agriculture still vastly labor intensive. Thus, women played a far bigger part in the German war economy than is generally known and may have actually played a bigger part in the war economy overall than they did in Britain.
Tooze also relates that in the seminal propaganda newsreel/documentary of the campaigns against France and the Low Countries, the Nazis played down the technological aspects of the panzers and aircraft and focused on the superior fighting qualities of the German soldier and whatnot for the reason for the stunning victory. And ironically, the Nazi ideology was rather late in embracing technology over the romantic notions of human will for their focus of victory. I think Tooze states that on the whole and accounting for living standards, the prewar German economy would be on par with Iran or South Africa today, IIRC…
That’s been a constant in continental Europe since WWII, notably in the EEC with farmers getting rather more attention than they deserve and producing economic distortions such as the famed butter mountain.
Maybe the Nazis were dancing to the same tune of, in mixed metaphors. the rural tail wagging the much larger economic dog to provide political support from a numerically minor constituency.
Not that it’s much different in Australia today.
Which led to the confusing excellence of some German armaments used in a military organisation heavily reliant upon horse drawn transport.
As for the excellence of the armaments, that was diluted by the use of forced labour and various sources of inadequately controlled production in comparison with the US which at the start of its involvement in WWII was not geared for a war economy yet within a year or so was almost fully geared to levels of efficiency and production which Germany, despite Speer’s supposed production hero status, never approached.
And the fact that Germany gained very little of military consequence from the occupied territories that wasn’t already captured from enemy service. Don’t ever fire a Browning Hi-Power made during the occupation of Belgium. :shock:
But much more in crucial raw materials in some cases.
Of all the nations which should not have started a war in the middle of the 20th century with little or no critical natural resources such as oil within its own borders, Germany was near the top of the list. Japan topped the list.
You seem to be constantly skirting answering my questions - what has the loans and credit made to the UK got to do with the German economy between 1933 and 1945 or how they needed to expand and strip nations to continue to fund their military and public works expansions to prevent bankruptcy - the course they were following was bankrupting the nation.
Nor does it explain how Germany would equip, feed and supply those extra troops you said it would have being as it could not manage to do so adequately for its actual forces.
Huge numbers of men came from the occupied nations as well as volunteers from abroad to join the Axis forces - many fought as well as or better than actual German national units (although some from areas in lands formerly belong to Czech, Poland, France, Belgium were declared germans and fought as German nationals and not in independent national Div’s or Bde’s).
Even former POW’s fought as well as some German units (especially later in the war when the standard of troops dropped) despite having poorer weapons and lacking transport or support weapons.