Comp. by: SSENDHAMIZHSELVAN
Stage: Proof
Chapter No.: 1
Title Name:
GEYERandTOOZE
Date:2/2/15
Time:14:35:30
Page Number: 32
banker, into the New Plan. Contrary to the idea that Hitler instigated a
Keynesian recovery, everything possible was done to prevent surging gov-
ernment spending and industrial employment spilling over into increased
consumption. Sectors such as textiles and food production were throttled
back, whilst chemicals and engineering boomed. Meanwhile, Hitler declared
a general price stop in 1936. And the destruction of the labour movement
held down wage growth. But how was Germany to pay for the imported raw
materials its booming heavy industry consumed? Much was made at the time
of Schacht
’s efforts to redirect German trade toward its ‘informal Empire’ in
Southeastern Europe. But Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria were a poor
substitute for the global trading network Germany had built up since the
nineteenth century. In global markets the failure to devalue the Reichsmark
left German exports grossly uncompetitive. So from 1935 Schacht resorted to
an elaborate export subsidy scheme to boost hard currency earnings, paid for
by a compulsory levy on those pro
fiting from the domestic boom.
Market liberals would of course object that such systems were grossly
inef
ficient. The modern neoliberalism of Friedrich Hayek originated in a
critique of the planned economies of the 1930s. But the instruments of state
control employed by regimes such as Hitler
’s were themselves the product of
the crisis of the market economy. Furthermore, even if there were inevitable
inef
ficiencies, the recovery taking place from the early 1930s onwards was
undeniable, as was the fact that the managers of the planned economies
developed their own particular skill set. Soviet factory managers and con-
struction engineers became expert at the
‘storming’ investment surges that
drove Stalin
’s Five-Year Plans. Meanwhile, in the Third Reich officials per-
fected the delicate balancing of limited stocks of hard currency. But above all,
for all their inef
ficiencies, systems of central planning enabled states to make
periodic strategic decisions. Stalin set his economy on a forced march toward
industrialization. Hitler
’s first move in 1933 was to suspend payment on
Germany
’s international debts and to prioritize rearmament, using the
foreign exchange controls to prevent any currency panic. The question over
the winter of 1935
–36 was whither the Nazi economy? On the answer to this
question would hang Europe
’s economic and political future. With full
employment rapidly approaching and the remobilization of the German
armed forces now publicly declared there were those around Hjalmar
Schacht arguing for a strategy of moderation. Meanwhile, the army and
Hermann Goering and the Luftwaffe were pushing for a further acceleration
of armaments. For Germany
’s neighbours this debate had ominous implica-
tions. How would they respond?
a d a m t o o z e a n d j a m e s r . m a r t i n
32
Comp. by: SSENDHAMIZHSELVAN
Stage: Proof
Chapter No.: 1
Title Name:
GEYERandTOOZE
Date:2/2/15
Time:14:35:30
Page Number: 33
Arms race
Facing not only Germany but the naval threats posed by Mussolini and
Imperial Japan, it was clear by 1936 that Britain would have to accelerate
rearmament. London
’s successful management of the dirty float of sterling
since 1931 had enabled substantial recovery driven by the expanding consump-
tion of a burgeoning middle class and increasingly af
fluent workers. For both
financial and strategic reasons, the British preferred to pursue a strategy of
highly concentrated rearmament that built very substantial military-industrial
capacity above all in aircraft, whilst permitting
‘business as usual’ to continue
as far as possible. The two most important elements of this strategy were the
large investment in the radar defensive chain and the construction of a
substantial shadow production capacity for key aircraft. This expansion in
industrial capacity had begun as early as 1935, with the construction of new
ordnance and armament facilities and specialized factories
– managed by
automobile companies, although owned by the state
– producing aircraft
and aero-engines.
7
By 1940, Britain was making more aircraft than any other
state.
8
Chamberlain
’s policy of Appeasement was thus a strategy that bal-
anced the priorities of home defence, imperial security and domestic political
economy. Pivotal to this was a diplomatic effort to contain Hitler while
simultaneously pursuing targeted, though still ambitious, programmes of
rearmament at home.
France
’s options were less attractive. In the aftermath of the First World
War the weakness of the French franc had been seared into the nation
’s
consciousness as a symbol of national enfeeblement. After 1924 it had seemed
as though the Republic, despite having defeated Germany, might slide, like
Italy, toward
financial chaos and political extremism. Poincaré’s stabilization
campaign in 1926 had rallied the Republican forces and given the Bank of
France the biggest gold reserves in Europe. And France had clung to that
position through the Depression. But the de
flation that this necessitated
hobbled any effort at rearmament and helped to paralyze France in strategic
terms. When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia and Hitler remilitarized the
Rhineland in the spring of 1936, France was in no position to react. Whilst
Britain began investing in its air defences, France and its continental allies
were in a more exposed position. In 1936 both Czechoslovakia and Romania
7
David Edgerton, Britain
’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources, and Experts in the Second
World War
(London: Allen Lane, 2011), p. 200.
8
Edgerton, Warfare State, p. 74.
The economics of the war with Nazi Germany
33