This chilling, fascinating new book is the first 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.

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lgli/e5f933133ee97652a5b73b19d7476bdc~0713995661,9780713995664.pdf

nexusstc/The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy/e5f933133ee97652a5b73b19d7476bdc.pdf

Michael Joseph Ltd

Particular Books

Penguin Classics

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

LONDON, Unknown, Apr 07, 2006

June 29, 2006

lg390186

producers:
AFPL Ghostscript 8.53

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

Adam Tooze Has Written The First New Account Of The Second World War In A Generation. He Does This By Placing Economics Alongside Race And Politics At The Heart Of The Story. An Intuitive Understanding Of Global Economic Realities Was Fundamental To Hitler's Worldview. He Understood That Germany's Relative Poverty In 1933 Was The Result Not Just Of The Great Depression But Also Of Its Limited Territory And Natural Resources. He Predicted The Dawning Of A New, Globalized World In Which Europe Would Be Crushed By America's Overwhelming Power. There Was One Last Chance: A European Superstate Under German Rule. But The Global Balance Of Economic And Military Power Was From The Outset Heavily Stacked Against Hitler, And It Was To Forestall This Danger From The West That He Launched His Under-resourced Armies On Their Unprecedented And Ultimately Futile Rampage Across Europe. Even In The Summer Of 1940, At The Moment Of Germany's Greatest-triumph, Hitler Was Still Haunted By The Looming Threat Of Anglo-american Air And Sea Power, Orchestrated, He Believed, By The World Jewish Conspiracy. Once The Wehrmacht Ran Aground In The Soviet Union, The War Rapidly Developed Into A Battle Of Attrition That Germany Could Not Hope To Win. The Failure Of Hitler, Albert Speer And Others To Admit This Meant That The Third Reich Was Destroyed At The Cost Of Tens Of Millions Of Lives.--jacket. Every Worker His Work -- Breaking Away -- Partners : The Regime And German Business -- Volksgemeinschaft On A Budget -- Saving The Peasants -- 1936 : Four Years To War -- Into The Danger Zone -- 1939 : Nothing To Gain By Waiting -- Going For Broke : The First Winter Of War -- Victory In The West -- Sieg Im Westen -- Britain And America : Hitler's Strategic Dilemma -- Preparing For Two Wars On Once -- The Grand Strategy Of Racial War -- December 1941 : Turning Point -- Labour, Food And Genocide -- Albert Speer : Miracle Man -- No Room For Doubt -- Disintegration -- The End. Adam Tooze. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 689-773) And Index.

**The Wages of Destruction** is a non-fiction book detailing the economic history of Nazi Germany. Written by Adam Tooze, it was first published by Allen Lane in 2006.
The Wages of Destruction won the Wolfson History Prize and the 2007 Longman/History Today Book of the Year Prize. It was published to critical praise from such authors as Michael Burleigh, Richard Overy and Niall Ferguson.
In the book, Tooze writes that after the Germans had failed to defeat Britain in 1940, the economic logic of the war drove them to an invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler was constrained do so in 1941 to obtain the natural resources necessary to challenge two economic superpowers: the United States and the British Empire. That sealed the fate of the Third Reich because it was resource constraints that made victory against the Soviet Union impossible, especially when it received supplies from the Americans and the British to supplement the resources that remained under Soviet control.
The book makes the case for the economic impact of the British and then Anglo-American strategic bombing campaign, but it argues that the wrong targets were often selected. The book also challenges the idea of an economic miracle under Albert Speer, and rejects the idea that the Nazi economy could have mobilised significantly more women for the war economy.
(from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction))

2011-04-11