Tooze's tour de force: a terrible subject, brilliantly explored

Worth listening to purely for it's sharp evisceration of Albert Speer, the Nazi who dodged the noose at Nuremberg, this book is a detailed and deeply insightful examination of the economic madness that was Germany's path to war and eventual defeat in May 1945.

Exhaustively detailed, the writing doesn't get bogged down in the dry statistics and brings to life the dreadful arithmetic of the Nazi economy and war machine,

A great complimentary work to "How the War was Won" by Philips Payson O'Brien.

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Absolute Banger

Probably the best book on the second world war I've ever encountered. contains some challenging material - especially for those on the right of UK/US politics who might find some of the stuff about the inspiration for Hitler's project difficult - but a must listen if you're into the history of the period.

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Essential in gaining an understanding of Nazism

And the coercive powers of the modern states in its ability to direct investment (not very efficiently). There’s still so much more to know on a micro level, but an excellent macro assessment, deftly weaving in political, military, and geopolitical context to the economic/financial central narrative.

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Subtly terrifying and absolutely superb

I admit to being baffled by one of the other reviewers who said they didn’t think this was an economic history. Perhaps they thought Hitler and Schacht and the others had some magical equation and that the book would lay out how that unfolded in 1930’s Germany. In reality economics, as someone once said, is concentrated politics. Hitler and his government had political goals, and sought to subordinate the economy to those goals. This book lays out how they did it, why key actors such as the capitalist magnates of German industry and finance went along with it, and how the priorities evolved in light of the internal logic of the Nazi economic system, in light of external events and in light of the peculiar impetus imparted by the racial hierarchy of Nazi social policy.

I describe the book as subtly terrifying. In a way I have simply never seen, it fully humanises and rationalises Nazi goals, using direct quotations from the people leading the state and economy and from primary sources. From the drive to establish a counterweight to America, to the realities of how to feed and extract labour from a continent occupied by Germany and blockaded by the largest navies in the world, Tooze’s ability to establish the political motivation of the Nazis fully makes intelligible key decisions, such as the death camps and the barbaric treatment of the Slavs. Intelligible, not an expression of evil, banal or otherwise, but the fullest expression of homo oeconomicus, and all the more absolutely horrifying for it.

Tooze also smashes myth after myth, about the economic “miracle” which Nazism was touted as, or the myth we Brits tell ourselves about how we stood alone against the full might of fascist tyranny. The economic and military imbalance between the empire, still the most powerful military on earth with huge reservoirs of food, factories and manpower, and Germany was staggering. Tooze brings this out beautifully, still more with the economic imbalance between backward, horse-powered Europe and the increasingly motorIsed USA. It also curbs some of the wilder things one commonly sees about the USSR, which, as Tooze outlines, was very nearly at the limits of its endurance, given the truly calamitous casualties caused by Stalin’s mishandling of the war from the beginning. For these and many other reasons it is the finest book on political economy I have read. I even went out and bought the paperback afterwards for ease of flicking to some key parts.

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Interesting lens to view German's WW2 through

Interesting to hear about the details that went into different aspects of making German's WW2 economy work, and what some of the driving forces were and how they affected overall diplomatic policy.

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Genuinely brilliant

I have been reading histories of WWII for over 50 years. I have become a little jaded; wondering how often one can come across something that truly adds something fresh given the mountain of books already written on every facet of that terrible conflict. Then this comes along.
I came to it via "Crashed"; Tooze's superb analysis of the 2008 financial meltdown. This, however, is better. Why? Because Tooze explains the dynamics of Hitler's war in a way that is not just new, it is unique.
He lays bare the economic drivers to the Nazi approach to WWII in a way that is clear, authoritative and totally credible. It really has changed my views on the war. It gives the first rational and credible explanation I have read for why on earth Hitler declared war on the USA. It offers a new context to the primacy (or otherwise) of Drang Nach Osten; the drive to the East. It adds powerful context as to just how reckless a gambler Hitler was given the threadbare economic underpinnings of his regime. It makes an important contribution on the importance of slave labour to the economics of the Nazi war machine and does a great job of bringing more rigour to the true role played by Albert Speer as opposed to his own reworking of history.
This is a truly brilliant, important book.

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6 people found this helpful

Superb analysis of Nazi economy

This is a superb piece of work, excellently narrated and it is very welcome that there is now this audio version.

As someone once said "it's the economy, stupid". Those argues in great depth and with thorough research that the downfall of the third reich was due to the economic failures, poor planning and lack of resources as much as purely military matters. His debunking of the Speer myth is very good too.

No one with an interest in WW2 should be without this piece of work in one format or another.

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1 person found this helpful

Excellent book

Excellent-excellent book, one of the best I've ever read about WWII and the best I've ever read about Germany's economy from 1933 to 1945

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Superb

Exceptional analysis and one to return to for a second go I think. Well read too.

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Crucial for understanding WW2

This is a very good book focusing on an aspect of the war that doesn't get enough attention normally, although there are some flaws in the author's understanding of political systems, but that doesn't really affect the overall conclusions reached. The beginning of the book is somewhat heavy as it focuses quite a bit on monetary policy which is a somewhat dry topic, although certainly very important for the history of the war. The rest is easier to understand and follow, focusing and different aspects of the war economy, like for example what was done to increase production in certain sectors (i.e aircraft, ammunitions etc.) and also some historical narration around that generally, like what was going on in the war at that time to place it in the general context of WW2.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in WW2, even if you are not really interested in economy or do not understand much of it, you can certainly get out a lot of this book, especially after the beginning.

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4 people found this helpful