Comp. by: SSENDHAMIZHSELVAN
Stage: Proof
Chapter No.: 1
Title Name:
GEYERandTOOZE
Date:2/2/15
Time:14:35:32
Page Number: 40
They instituted a blockade, moderately accelerated their military spending
and made plans for large-scale procurement from the USA enabled by the
cash-and-carry provisions that passed Congress in November 1939. Stalin and
Mussolini were playing a waiting game. Stalin used the time he believed that
he had bought through the Molotov
–Ribbentrop pact to accelerate arms
spending. Mussolini did not. In 1940 Italian military spending at 12 per cent of
GDP was barely higher than it had been in 1937 during the Ethiopian war.
There were those in the Nazi regime who wanted to play a long game.
Economics Minister Funk and the chief military-economic planner of the
Wehrmacht General Thomas were in this camp. But Hitler dismissed their
view as quixotic. It might be comforting to prepare plans that would stretch
Germany
’s raw materials out over a three-year war. But Germany could not
pro
fit from such a conflict. It would play into the hands of its enemies who
had far greater access to world markets. The Wehrmacht needed to achieve a
major breakthrough to change the terms of the war as soon as possible.
Awed by Germany
’s spectacular successes in the early war years, post-war
analysts jumped to the conclusion that Hitler
’s reasoning was part of a well
worked-out Blitzkrieg strategy in which everything from weapons procure-
ment, to the economics of armaments planning and diplomacy was geared
toward facilitating Hitler
’s salami-slicing aggression. In fact, there is no
evidence that any such grand strategy existed. Even at the end of 1939 no
one anticipated Germany
’s lightning battlefield victories in 1940 and 1941.
Hitler
’s insistence on immediate action in 1939 was not the result of a brilliant
grand strategy or a peculiar gift for military prophecy. It was rather the
necessary and rather desperate conclusion to draw from the situation created
by Hitler
’s aggression and the decision by Britain and France to stand
and
fight.
In a long-term race for further economic mobilization Germany had little
to gain. Its economy unlike that of virtually all the other combatants
’ was
already at overfull employment in 1939 so it had least scope to mobilize
additional labour. Civilian consumption and investment had never been the
main priority in Hitler
’s economic miracle, so there was less cushion there
too. When war broke out Minister of Economic Affairs Funk proposed large
tax increases. But since the German population was already very heavily
taxed by international standards, Hitler deemed this politically inopportune.
Instead, rationing and the redirection of production were used to curtail
consumption. It was from the bulging accounts of the savings banks that the
government helped itself to the funds it needed. Certainly, there was no lack
of mobilization. Already in the
first months of the war the German military
a d a m t o o z e a n d j a m e s r . m a r t i n
40
Comp. by: SSENDHAMIZHSELVAN
Stage: Proof
Chapter No.: 1
Title Name:
GEYERandTOOZE
Date:2/2/15
Time:14:35:32
Page Number: 41
burden surged toward 40 per cent of GDP, putting all the other powers to
shame. But to talk of a long-term German economic strategy in 1939 would
be to miss the point. In the
first year of the war Hitler was going for broke
and to the amazement of the world, the gamble paid off.
Germany
’s sudden victories in Western Europe in the spring of 1940 sud-
denly shifted the balance and inverted the time horizons of the combatants.
France became the object of German pillage and occupation. Its economy
was thrown from a mobilization footing into disorder and stagnation. By
1943
, even before
fighting resumed on French soil, output had plunged to less
than 70 per cent of its pre-war level. To take advantage of France
’s defeat,
Italy opportunistically joined the war and doubled its military spending as a
share of GDP by 1941 to a modest 23 per cent. Germany
’s posture shifted
from gambling on a quick victory in France to hoping that that victory would
force Britain to surrender. It did not. Germany
’s victories forced the British
Empire to recon
figure its long-range war strategy to reflect the changed
circumstances. Britain was far more vulnerable to attack both by air and by
sea than ever before. But contrary to Churchillian rhetoric, Britain was never
alone. The loss of its military and economic allies in Europe led it to draw
more than ever on the Empire and the USA. The basic direction of British
armaments strategy directed toward aerial and naval warfare remained in
place, but the stresses to which Britain was subject revealed themselves in
the macroeconomic balances. The budget de
ficit exploded from £108 million
to £2.9 billion in 1942. Taxes were hiked sharply. By 1941 British military
spending as a share of GDP had surged ahead of even that of Germany.
During this early phase of the war, the UK was the most mobilized war
economy in the world.
Early in the war Britain bene
fited from the fact that in 1939 the UK
workforce was still underemployed. Women, most notably, were far easier
to mobilize in Britain than in Germany because the rate of employment
among women had been so much lower in 1939. By the end of 1941 the
British output was 21 per cent greater than in 1938. But as government
spending surged it was clear that draconian measures could not be avoided.
In its desperate experiment in macroeconomic imbalance, Britain mobilized
the best available economic expertise. In the crisis summer of 1940 John
Maynard Keynes was drafted into the Treasury, where he and his team
diagnosed the same problem their German counterparts had faced two years
earlier, what Keynes had dubbed an
‘inflationary gap’. As the war effort hit
high gear, the government
’s demands exceeded the total pool of social
savings. In early 1941 relative to total government spending of £3.7 billion
The economics of the war with Nazi Germany
41