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The economics of the war with Nazi Germany
a d a m t o o z e a n d j a m e s r . m a r t i n
The entanglement between war and economics revealed by the First World
War was to become one of the de
fining features of the first half of the
twentieth century. Never before had war been so resource-intensive, never
before were economies so self-consciously reorganized around the needs of
war. The war economies of the First World War were novel and unantici-
pated improvisations, experiments in organization. In 1914 the sense of a
break was dramatic and shocking, but it had the virtue of clarity. There had
been peace and then there was war. After the First World War the victorious
powers struggled to restore the clarity of this boundary between war and
peace. The new self-conscious ideology of peacefulness that was such a
characteristic feature of international relations in the 1920s had its counterpart
in the effort to restore the international economy.
1
The relationship between
economic restoration and paci
fication was reciprocal. Curbing arms expend-
iture and restoring the
‘knave proof’ discipline of the international gold
standard were conjoined aims. Perhaps this nexus was best exempli
fied by
the British
‘ten year rule’ adopted in 1919. To create the conditions necessary
for
fiscal consolidation and a return to the gold standard, this mandated that
military budgeting should proceed on the assumption that no major war
should be expected within ten years. In 1928 Churchill had it made self-
perpetuating.
Generalized across the international system in the 1920s, the manipulation
of these relationships between
finance and strategy was one of the most
potent weapons in the arsenal of the liberal powers. But acknowledging this
connection also implied a new and terrifying vulnerability. A breakdown
in the security system would involve a rupture in the balance of the
1
A. Iriye, ed., The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, vol. iii: The Globalizing
of America,
1913–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
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Comp. by: SSENDHAMIZHSELVAN
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international economy. Conversely, a rupture in the international economy
would most likely have security implications. The hypothetical of total war
changed the nature of peacetime economic government and the meaning of
the response to the crisis. The restoration of the 1920s was always incomplete
and fragile and the shocking collapse of the Great Depression was just such a
destabilizing crisis. Not only was it the worst on record, but it immediately
reopened the
floodgates to the models of national economic mobilization
that had emerged from the First World War. National economic recovery
programmes all too easily shaded over into rhetorical and then real rearma-
ment. Given the implosion of the world economy, consolidated national
economies anchoring regional blocs emerged after 1929 as the de facto norm.
It was all too easy to imagine these trading blocs as antagonist strategic
platforms. As a result, by 1939, quite unlike in 1914, all the major powers had
been living for the best part of a decade under the shadow of war. Not that
‘business as usual’ was immediately abandoned. But the very fact that that
term had such attractive resonance, pointed to the shadow of its alternative,
total war. This essay will explore how the major powers of Europe and the
USA confronted this challenge, how they mobilized their economies when
war came in 1939, and how at the end of the Second World War they once
again wrestled with the problem of how to restore economic peace. Viewed
in terms of strictly economic metrics it is conventional to draw a sharp line in
1945
separating the troubled interwar era from the
‘post-war’ era of triumph-
ant growth. In terms of economic success the difference is undeniable. But
the moniker of
‘post-war’ is seriously misleading when applied to the 1950s, a
period of intense military confrontation in the early Cold War and violent
decolonization struggles. Alongside the famous welfare state initiatives of the
1940
s, the warfare states that had
first taken shape in the First World War
were more entrenched than ever.
2
Recognizing this casts new light on the
nature of the
‘post-war’ international economic order.
The breakdown of order
The last hurrah of the effort to institutionalize peace after the First World
War came at the Naval Arms Control Conference in London in 1930. Under
the sign of the new ideology of peace enshrined in the Kellogg-Briand pact
and its renunciation of war, the USA, Britain and Japan, with France making a
2
D. Edgerton, Warfare State: Britain,
1920–1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
a d a m t o o z e a n d j a m e s r . m a r t i n
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Comp. by: SSENDHAMIZHSELVAN
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Chapter No.: 1
Title Name:
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reluctant fourth, reaf
firmed their commitment to arms limitation. They did
so within months of having rati
fied the latest of the post-war debt deals
capped by the Young Plan for German reparations. At the same time, loyally
following the dictates of the gold standard they reacted to the hiking of US
interest rates and the implosion of Wall Street by setting in motion a world-
wide de
flation. Arms control was part of a piece with fiscal austerity and
monetary de
flation. In an unprecedented global radio broadcast to celebrate
the conclusion of the London naval agreement, President Hoover and Prime
Ministers MacDonald and Hamaguchi took turns to hail a new era of
internationalism,
financial stability and military retrenchment. What they
did not appreciate was the damage which the
financial and economic crisis
unleashed by coordinated global de
flation would do to their vision of global
paci
fication.
The unhinging of the world order set in motion by the Depression became
manifest on the weekend of 19
–20 September 1931 when rogue nationalists in
Japan
’s army unleashed the annexation of Manchuria with the Mukden
incident, and the government of Great Britain declared its departure from
the gold standard. It was followed by the rest of the Empire and all of its
smaller trading partners, as well as Japan. At
first this was viewed as a
temporary expedient. The USA, France and Italy remained on gold. In the
summer of 1931 Germany had been forced to adopt exchange controls to
contain the crisis in its banking sector and the wasting of its foreign reserves,
whilst retaining the of
ficial parity of the Reichsmark. A major global confer-
ence was scheduled for London in the summer of 1933 to discuss the
restoration of the world economy. But over the winter of 1932
–33 another
wave of bank failures swept across the USA and Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)
in his
first hundred days chose to prioritize national recovery. Adopting a
beggar-thy-neighbour approach he allowed an unchecked 30 per cent devalu-
ation of the dollar, the
first step in a comprehensive retreat from inter-
national engagement that marked the early years of the New Deal. The
British and French protested, but with little real credibility. After all it had
been Britain that pulled the plug on the gold standard. And in 1932 it was
Britain that in a spectacular historical reversal led the Empire in the creation
of a tariff bloc.
With the dollar plunging and the London Economic Conference offering
an embarrassing display of the weakness of liberalism, fascist Italy, Hitler
’s
new government in Germany and the ultra-imperialists in Japan all openly
proclaimed their nationalist contempt for the international order. The status
quo powers seemed to have no answer. Not only was the world economy in
The economics of the war with Nazi Germany
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