by Adam Tooze
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Product Description
An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze’s controversial new book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period to explore how Hitler’s surprisingly prescient vision— ultimately hindered by Germany’s limited resources and his own racial ideology—was to create a German super-state to dominate Europe and compete with what he saw as America’s overwhelming power in a soon-to- be globalized world. The Wages of Destruction is a chilling work of originality and tremendous scholarship that is already setting off debate in Germany and will fundamentally change the way in which history views the Second World War.
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Average Customer Review:
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
 Who Defeated Hitler?, 2008-04-29
People are still fascinated by Nazi Germany even Sixty three years after the surrender of that nation. One of the questions that history buffs continue to ponder is why Hitler invaded the USSR? How could he have been so foolish? In hindsight Hitler's attack on the USSR might seem foolish. However, we must consider two things. First, The decision to invade was made with foresight, not hindsight. Second, we do not all have 20-20 hindsight. Many of us err in thinking that the Germans had no chance against Stalin.
Tooze makes an interesting case that the invasion of the USSR was not as foolish as many think it was. Hitler needed grain, oil, coal and other materials from the USSR to fight against the UK and USA. Hitler turned his most effective armed service, his army against what appeared to be the weakest opponent: the USSR (p455). Germany had 2.5 times the per capita GDP of the USSR. Invading the USSR was critical because Western European industry was dependent upon exports, and the British had cut them off.
Tooze challenges the myth of Soviet invincibility. The fact of the matter is that the Germans did have a real chance of defeating Stalin, as they had defeated the Czar in World War One. German industry was able to produce enough to fight against the Soviets, but not while also fighting the USA and UK. The Germans also took advantage of the fact that Stalin has massed much of his forces on his Western border with Hitler. The surprise attack on June 22 1941 did lead to stunning victories, and the USSR nearly collapsed by the end of that summer. Had Hitler won against Stalin, he would have gained unrestricted access to resources he needed to fight the USA and UK.
Tooze also challenges the idea that Albert Speer brought the full force of German industry to bear in Germany's war effort. German industry was not sufficiently well developed and supplied to match the war production of the UK and USA. Add in Soviet production, and there was really nothing that Speer could have done. Tooze claims that Speer actually did little to increase production. Germany did achieve some economies of scale with its mass production, but this efficiency increased quantity at the expense of quality. For instance, the Germans achieved scale efficiencies in producing the obsolete Heinkel 111 bomber.
Tooze recognizes that it was Hitler's declaration of war on the USA that "sealed his fate" (p668). Even if Hitler had vanquished Stalin, he would have faced a long term fight against the UK-USA alliance. Ultimately, Hitler was defeated by his own ideology. Hitler foresaw the emerging Globalized US centered economy, and recognized that Germany was heading for a minor role. Ideology clouded his worldview and made world war seem necessary. Or, you might say that his hatred of the Jewish people distorted his foresight regarding Globalization. Hitler had no real reason to fear the US as the central figure in Globalization.
If there is any one problem with this book its that Tooze overestimates the importance of economic factors in deciding the war. While it is true that the US and UK had massive economic advantages over the Nazis, this does not mean that the US-UK could not fail with its invasion of Europe. Eisenhower himself thought that the Nazis could have stopped him, had they used V1 rockets against the Normandy invasion, or if they had developed their jet aircraft sooner. So the Nazis could have made up for their economic defeciencies with some scientific advantages. Fortunately, the Nazis did not take full advantage of their scientific advances.
Hitler played some of his cards right, but the deck was stacked so far against him that you have to wonder why he attempted global domination. While the Germans applied their resources to winning the war effectively, the overall strategy of defeating the USA and UK was simply not feasible. The Nazis would have never crossed the Atlantic, and the English effectively cut Germany off from the overseas resources it needed. What we can draw from this is that the English played a crucial role in containing the Nazis, and US industry overwhelmed them.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Used like new, 2008-04-09
I couldn't be more pleased with the book. It is like brand new. It came in a reasonable time frame as predicted. I'm very pleased. I ave not had time to start reading the book as yet.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Looong but worth it, 2008-03-04
I first noticed this book when it was discussed on a WWII military history forum. I bought it and put it on my book shelf to read at some future point in time. Recently, a comment in regards to one of my reviews (on amazon.com) said they'd like to see a review of this book. I was apprehensive to tackle such a scholarly done project, ESPECIALLY since I know next to nothing about economics. I was told to simply begin when the author starts talking about WWII, somewhere past page 400, more than half way through the book. I thought I'd try to read it cover to cover...well, I was fooling myself. A lot of this stuff I will not remember the next day, hell, probably not the next hour. I skimmed through perhaps 10-20% of the book, but as I was skimming the book I kept coming up on small gems and nuggets of information which put things into a better perspective and context.
I cannot do a review of this book in any type of 'traditional' manner, I can only manage a small list of facts, ideas, theories, etc that I found interesting and enlightening. To begin with; the author made an excellent point in the fact that Jewish longing for leaving Germany was being affected by Germany not letting them take much currency with them, this turns out to have been due, to a large degree, to the fact that such a loss for the German currency market would prove a horror for the German economy. This is an aspect of this event I had never thought of, undoubtedly, because I am not an economist but also because no one ever thought of mentioning it. Of course this will not take away from the rampant anti-semitism and perhaps did in fact see an easy way to make money by making Jewish refugees leave practically all of their belongings behind. In either case, this is simply another fact which is worth knowing about.
In regards to WWII; you will regularly hear people mention how the Third Reich was in control of the majority of Europe yet still could not match the production numbers of a Soviet Union, for example, which was down in population, land, and factories after the German invasion of the USSR. Well, it appears that France, for example, depended highly on resources that they were receiving from England and other overseas countries, without it their economy couldn't function to its fullest. Germany, apparently, was hardly being able to keep up to their own needs of raw materials for their highly expanding industry, having another country, or half dozen countries, in need of the same raw materials became more of a hindrance to the German war effort. France and Poland helped by supplying workers when more and more Germans were needed for the armed forces, but many times these foreign workers would not be up to German worker 'quality.'
I greatly appreciate the author going into details regarding Germany's invasion of France. Manstein's plan was nothing out of the ordinary, as the author points out, in concentrating an enormous amount of man and machine power into a section of the front the enemy doesn't consider worth its time is not something that has never been done in the history of warfare. In fact it would not have been done if not for some of the earlier plans falling into enemy hands! The same is true for the attack against the Soviet Union, concentrating the largest invasion force the world has ever seen, and operationally achieving enormous advantages in the breakthrough sectors is what pushed Germany through to her victories in 1941. The Soviets did the same in the latter part of the war, but today they're known as "Red Army hordes" while the Germans are lauded for the military prowess and finesse. As for the war in North Africa it was a sideshow, Rommel's running back and forth with a force he could hardly coordinate or provide logistics for was a thorn in the allies' side and both sides, during the invasion of France and North Africa, used propaganda to highlight Germany's military abilities. The Germans Wehrmacht's military capabilities were played up while the allies could cling to a reason for some of the most spectacular defeats they'd suffer during WWII.
It should also be mentioned that, contrary to popular belief, Germany employed a tremendous amount of females throughout their industries, heavily in agriculture. Thus the idea that if they would have only used more women they would have had an easier time is a myth. Added to this should be the fact that due to Nazi Racial policies MILLIONS of workers, mainly Jews and Russian POWs, were lost to murder, genocide, mass starvation, disease, etc throughout the first few years of the war. It was only when there was a tremendous enough need for more workers did these two groups, as two examples, begin to be used more in the German wartime economy.
General PlanOst is well known, but here it is presented, as well as its history, with excellent detail. It was quite interesting to see how during the war the Wehrmacht was cut off from its food supplies coming in from the Reich and made to live off the land, as if what they were doing there for the past 1-2 years wasn't enough, now they would be taking away whatever food they found from an already poverty ridden and starving population. The General Government was then made to send Germany food supplies, up till then they had relied on food FROM Germany to keep the population on rations. Suffice to say, all of these measures led to massive starvation, not something that concerned the German administration as long as their troops and Germany proper were/was fed.
The 'myth' of Speer was interesting to skim through, I'm not that familiar with this particular 'myth' so I didn't want to go into SO much detail, but according to the author the 'miracle' he was responsible for was a long time coming, he simply arrived at the right time and at the right place. Milch was also a man one should pay attention to as, apparently, he was the one responsible for the Luftwaffe's tremendous numbers, rather than Speer.
These are only a few examples of the information you'll find within the pages of this tremendous work. Definitely a new look at the war, a new context for what you might think you knew is presented, very much worth your time (even if you skim through the first few chapters like I did!).
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Thorough and Sophisticated, 2008-01-09
Without having read many other histories of the Third Reich, economic or otherwise, I'm in no position to compare this work with the vast body of literature on the subject. I am, however, able to clarify some aspects of Tooze's argument that other reviews have obscured, and I'm very eager to point out the theoretical sophistication of this book.
It seems that many readers believe "The Wages of Destruction" argues that all (or at least the majority) of the Nazis' political and military decisions were made on the basis of economics. This is both true and false. Tooze argues that Hitler passionately desired to raise the German standard of living to a level worthy of the Aryan race and, furthermore, was desperate to preserve that race in the long run by giving the fatherland enough living space to be economically self-sufficient in the tumultuous global economy. Thus the political decision to begin rearmament in violation of the Versailles treaty was motivated by a desire for economic expansion to the level of autonomy, but that economic expansion was seen as a means of racial preservation. Thus, while Tooze does an exemplary job of showing how economic and logistical rationale repeatedly guided Nazi decision-making on the path towards their ideological objectives, his history does not debunk the powerful role of Nazi ideology.
I do not write this to indicate that "Wages" fails as an economic history. In fact, I do so to highlight that Tooze embraces a theoretical sophistication not usually attributed to historians. It is arguably fair to characterize historians as "atheoretical" - specialists who deal in particulars and resist the urge to generalize patterns in human affairs. Although there is no explicit mention of them in the text, it seems clear to me that Adam Tooze has been influenced theoretically by the British sociologist Anthony Giddens and the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (Emeritus at Leeds College in the UK). I could not identify any point on which Tooze's account conflicted with Gidden's theorizing in "The Nation State and Violence Vol. 2" or Bauman's in "Modernity and the Holocaust". While I'm unable to provide evidence of this theoretical congruence (if not debt) in my review, I strongly encourage the reader to examine "Modernity and the Holocaust" and discover the connection for themselves. Having done so, "The Wages of Destruction" will reveal its unusual sophistication in addition to its obvious thoroughness.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Hitler's REAL Objectives Revealed!, 2007-12-29
WAGES OF DESTRUCTION is the first new, original interpretation of the true objectives of Hitler's Reich that has been written since its fall. Tooze, a British historian, has written an exciting account of how the German economy prepared for war, waged that war and ultimately collapsed due to the avalanche of Allied material and manpower superiority. He documents that Germany's economy was no larger than that of England, yet Hitler was mortally afraid of the U.S. becoming the world's only super power. He saw the U.S. as under "Jewish leadership", and that its victory would mean the end of European Civilization as a world force and that a "Coca Cola" culture would pollute the rest of the world's culture. Hitler saw only two possibilities: acceptance of America's domination as an "affluent suburb" of New York & Washington, D.C.'s "Anglo-Jewish elite" or establishing a new European based super power, modeled after the Roman Empire. Germany was to be the New Rome, which would unite Western Europe and then engage in a vast land/resources grab in the East. Hitler saw this as paralleling how the Original 13 American Colonies united and conquered the rest of the continent under Manifest Destiny to get the land and resources needed to become a super power. Only then could Europe hold off American world domination. Accordingly, Hitler built up Germany into a mighty war machine and then launched his "last great European colonial adventure" with the invasion of Russia. Tooze demolishes completely the myth that Nazi Germany didn't completely mobilize for Total War by citing extensive German documentation, heretofore never used. Hitler's actions failed due to his inability to convince Western Europe into joining the alliance needed to conquer the East. War in the West was the only alternative. Ironically, the 1940 conquests only burdened the German war economy since Western Europe was a net importer of food and raw materials and Germany had to support them! The Russian assault failed in 1941 and Germany had a two front war, with the American military might far outstripping anything that Germany-Western Europe could accomplish. By late 1943, the Third Reich was out producing the Soviet Union. but it was too late. The United States and the British Empire smothered Nazi Germany with material while the Soviet Union drowned it with their blood (29 Million dead!). Tooze is the only man alive would could make the "dismal science" of economics read like an adventure epic. Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!
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