Alex Harrowell on Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction

Alex writes:

Review: The Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze: The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy... is getting some very good reviews, and this one will be no different. Tooze’s thesis is that the Nazi German economy was a more powerful factor in many decisions taken by the leadership than hitherto assumed, that its structural weaknesses were determining in the failure of Nazism, and that Nazism itself can be understood as an effort to escape them by a combination of will and technology. The first is fairly original, and certainly controversial, the second is hardly controversial (although it is surprising that it still needs restating; the image of impregnable fascist might dies hard), and the third is both new and highly controversial.

Tooze begins with a discussion of Germany’s economic problems and relative place in the world whilst passing through the Depression. He provides an excellent account of Stresemann’s policy in terms of a special relationship with the United States.... America in German eyes is a main theme of the book, and a little-remembered sub-theme of Nazi discourse more generally. Not only were leading Nazis concerned about the potential power of the US, they both idealised what they took to be the unique efficiency of 1920s US industry, and demonised what they took to be the decadence and miscegenation of US society....

Stresemann and his fellow liberals, and the Social Democrats, thought the answer to America was to preserve the international political and trading structure; perhaps with a European community in the far future. The Nazi response was to shake the structure until it fell down....

What got Germany back to work was rearmament, and Tooze argues that much of what is thought of as civilian investment was actually more like disguised military investment, or investment in war-supplying industry. It is well worth pointing out here that Tooze is excellent on the corporate world of Nazi Germany, and especially the fast-growing influence and power of the top technical executives of big industry (especially chemicals and aeronautical engineering), who made up something like an independent technocratic lobby in their own right. J.K. Galbraith’s technostructure comes to mind; this may have been the most malevolent and evil manifestation of it ever....

The upshot was that the decision for war, and then the decision to take the offensive in the West, and finally the decision to take the offensive into Russia, were at each step driven by a logic of economic bootstrapping. War, and the consequent loss of world trade, had a serious initial impact on the German economy; inflation threatened to burst out of control, there was a constant struggle between interests over short-supply assets, and a key feature of the German economy caused deep discontent....

Peasants were a key Nazi constituency, as well as occupying an important place in ideology; unfortunately this image of virtue didn’t translate into grain all that well.... Here, the appalling figure of Herbert Backe, State Secretary and later Minister of Agriculture, stands out; Backe wrote a PhD thesis years before entering office on the Russian grain business, in which he explained that the superior people without space must get rid of the Russians in order to secure the Ukraine’s surplus and settle enough of their urban working class to overcome the unrooted, degenerate tendencies created by the modern nomads, that is to say the Jews....

[A]lthough the conquest of western Europe turned a very bad economic position into a tolerable one with considerable potential, Europe was far more globalised than the Nazi economists assumed. Oil is the canonical example, but Europe also imported a lot of animal feed, and also British coal. Problems with transport, and the planners’ inability to come up with a settlement of coal supply between the mighty interest groups concerned, exacerbated the feed problem. As agricultural productivity fell, so did productivity down the mines; it probably would have done anyway, French communists not being likely to bend their backs any harder for German fascists, but hunger is enough to explain the droop in coal output per hour.... The upshot was a European economy operating massively below capacity and a German economy running red hot, with a continent-wide shortage of key inputs. Soviet trade, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, matched part of the difference, but the Soviet government demanded its price, especially in terms of technology transfer....

[W]ith the occupied territories only a marginal benefit, and much capital investment not yet producing, Germany was faced with the rapid spin-up of US production. Where to go for the next bootstrap, before US industrial power took effect? Russia, clearly. Tooze’s book may be a final slam-dunk demonstration for the “functionalist” view of Nazism, dominant since the 1980s, which argues that the regime’s internal politics, shared assumptions, and the incremental radicalisation caused by a succession of crises drove Germany into war and genocide, rather than a clear rationalist design. Independent decisions, taken for different reasons, mutually reinforced each other....

In nearly all British accounts of the second world war, the author takes sides regarding one or more of the morality, effectiveness, and wisdom of the RAF’s strategic bomber offensive against Germany; it’s an identity-creating decision for any British historian.... Tooze argues, against Galbraith, that the bombing was indeed effective....

In conclusion, what stands out is that the Third Reich was fascinated by the United States, perhaps even more than the Soviet Union; Hitler spoke of the Volga as Germany’s Mississippi, and various SS Schreibtischtäter of treating its inhabitants as “Red Indians”. The size of the proposed empire was frequently compared to Canada or Australia. It is clear that a major motivating factor for many leading Nazis was a wish to escape from an increasingly integrated world economy, and a matching desire to have a Grossraumwirtschaft to match the people seen as controlling the world economy; Tooze’s book leaves the disturbing sensation that this is us.

Comments

[Phil]

Not having read Tooze's book I can't judge his thesis, but I always thought Hitler's invasion of Russia was the result of a long held ideological goals that was not strictly economic but part of his racist ideology and long preceded his attainment of power. And if the Nazis were so economically sophisticated and comprehending of American economic power,why did they so casually declare war in 1941?

[Phil]

Not having read Tooze's book I can't judge his thesis, but I always thought Hitler's invasion of Russia was the result of a long held ideological goals that was not strictly economic but part of his racist ideology and long preceded his attainment of power. And if the Nazis were so economically sophisticated and comprehending of American economic power,why did they so casually declare war in 1941?

[Phil]

Not having read Tooze's book I can't judge his thesis, but I always thought Hitler's invasion of Russia was the result of a long held ideological goals that was not strictly economic but part of his racist ideology and long preceded his attainment of power. And if the Nazis were so economically sophisticated and comprehending of American economic power,why did they so casually declare war in 1941?

[shah8]

This is where, as Atrios might say, click on the link and read it all.

If the book is as the reviews say, then I buy it much more readily than Overy's Why the Allies Won. Of course, the review contradicting some of Professor Delong's arguments about area bombing (I remember all the talk about committing the best anti tank weapon, 88mm AA guns).

Ad hoc malvolence is a bad way to go about your business.

[gordon]

"Tooze’s thesis is that the Nazi German economy was a more powerful factor in many decisions taken by the leadership than hitherto assumed...[this thesis] is fairly original, and certainly controversial..."

Hmmm... I can remember my father explaining to me 35 years ago that massive diversion of resources into rearmament (and a consequent big standing army, navy and air force) left Germany so economically crippled that war was the only way out. For "bootstrapping" I think we should read "plunder".

And as for 'The “functionalist” view of Nazism, dominant since the 1980s, which argues that the regime’s internal politics, shared assumptions, and the incremental radicalisation caused by a succession of crises drove Germany into war and genocide, rather than a clear rationalist design', it would be a good idea to review R.J.Evans' "The Third Reich in Power", which explains that rearmament and planning for war was a central and dominant policy theme from the beginning of Nazi government in Germany. It wasn't "incremental radicalisation"; the decision to arm and attack was there from the beginning.

[Bruce Wilder]

AH: "The upshot was that the decision for war, and then the decision to take the offensive in the West, and finally the decision to take the offensive into Russia, were at each step driven by a logic of economic bootstrapping."

Phil: "I always thought Hitler's invasion of Russia was the result of a long held ideological goals that was not strictly economic but part of his racist ideology and long preceded his attainment of power."

Phil is, of course, correct, but it is not hard to imagine what is going on here. Historians are prisoners of their documents, and Tooze is reading documents generated by the hyper-rationalist corporate apparatchiks, who must rationalize what they are doing.

America's present, excellent adventure in Iraq provides an opportunity to generate insight into how this works -- how otherwise smart people are led to try to rationalize an enterprise, being driven forward by an essentially irrational person, and make themselves stupid in the process. Whatever initiatives are taken at the highest level have to be treated as solutions to urgent problems, and everyone pretends these initiatives are being adopted as solutions to pressing problems. In fact, pressing problems are not being addressed at the highest level, because Dear Leader does not care and doesn't fathom the problem in any case, and the initiatives being undertaken relate to the Leader's own agenda, arrived at in an irrational process, founded on some mix of insanity and stupidity. But, only a rung or two down the ladder from the top, the pretense and the rationalization begin, and are carried out in a huge volume of documents. Tooze is reading the documents.

Go read Stephen Biddle, George Packer, David Petraeus, Zalmay Khalilzad, Anthony Cordesman or any number of other sober rationalists on our Iraq policy, and see how much sense they make. These are not the rabid, ignorant neo-cons, but they write like morons when it comes to rationalizing some purpose for the U.S. to be fighting in Iraq at a cost of thousands of lives and $800 billion and counting. Imagine some future historian. thinking that their "thinking" drove American Iraq policy.

[christofay]

Documents, documents, Greenspan has a new book out, "Rush to Publish: How I Am Succeeding in Replenishing the Coffers." While this mass market book will probably be unlike his market moving Great Man at Delphi pronouncements, that is understandable, I think he falls into the Khalilzad gray zone, trying to sound rational but working for the sophomoric.

[gordon]

Bruce Wilder's "...the Leader's own agenda, arrived at in an irrational process, founded on some mix of insanity and stupidity..." does less than justice to the facts.

First, quite a few people, mostly (I think) Republicans, are making out like bandits from the War on Terror. This isn't happening entirely by accident.

Second, don't forget the huge bounce in popularity an unpopular President Bush got out of invading Afghanistan and Iraq. It's evaporating fast now, but it was huge then. Again, this wasn't accidental.

More speculatively, Israel was no doubt pleased that a modernising, unified, relatively advanced oil economy quite close by was reduced to a fractured collection of warring sects and factions almost overnight. And of course, the oil is still there, still waiting for the right oil law...

No, I don't think words like "irrational", "insanity" and "stupidity" are really appropriate.

[Anderson]

"the incremental radicalisation caused by a succession of crises drove Germany into war and genocide"

Don't miss the "AND GENOCIDE" there, folks. Functionalism has always been about making the Holocaust into an unfortunate bureaucratic accident. Not that we haven't gotten some good perspectives from the functionalists, but their goal shouldn't be forgotten.

Germany in the hands of neo-Prussian warlords might've launched WW2; it might have invaded Russia; there might have been pogroms, even (by the Russians?); but there would not have been a systematic effort to wipe out Jews from the face of Europe.

[sglover]

"Second, don't forget the huge bounce in popularity an unpopular President Bush got out of invading Afghanistan and Iraq. It's evaporating fast now, but it was huge then. Again, this wasn't accidental.

More speculatively, Israel was no doubt pleased that a modernising, unified, relatively advanced oil economy quite close by was reduced to a fractured collection of warring sects and factions almost overnight. And of course, the oil is still there, still waiting for the right oil law...

No, I don't think words like "irrational", "insanity" and "stupidity" are really appropriate."

But I think your own examples show that they're entirely appropriate.

I don't think the Iraq-related profiteering clinches your case. Crony handouts are a feature of EVERY initiative with the Cheney crime syndicate, from Medicare "reform" to FEMA to every DoD budget they've ever drawn up. I'm as cynical as anyone about the gangsters running our once-republic, but I just don't think they have the foresight to run a conspiracy of the necessary magnitude.

The political benefits are decidedly underwhelming. The present sorry course of our Iraq adventure isn't a surprise to anyone who was sceptical about the thing from the start. Sure, Rove got his little political bounce in '04, but the ensuing four years may have tarnished the GOP for decades to come. I'll concede that the ongoing war continues to paralyze the supposed "opposition" party. But as infuriating as that is for liberals, it's hardly driving people back to the GOP. In fact, the GOP seems to be evolving into its own hermetically sealed BizarroLand universe. Where's the political gain, here?

As far as any Israeli gains go, Iraq was already thoroughly neutered when the invasion began. Its economy was a shambles, and it didn't even control its own airspace. I don't doubt that many in the neo-con camp are devoted to Jerusalem at least as much as they are to Washington, but then again, their strategic judgement hasn't exactly been real good, eh? Lots of non-delusional Israelis were as sceptical of the Iraq adventure as American war critics.

To my mind, intellectual sclerosis, ideological delusions, and a deeply broken political system are enough to explain our glorious Iraq adventure. There's never been a rational reason that held up to serious scrutiny.

[gordon]

sglover, I hasten to agree that US War on Terror is a policy disaster if seen from any viewpoint approximating public interest or national interest or even longer-term welfare of the Republican party. What I'm saying is that isn't the viewpoint from which the WOT is viewed by the present US Administration. It seems to me that they are interested primarily in personal payoffs to themselves and their immediate supporters. From that viewpoint, their actions have been successful and aren't "stupid", "irrational" or "insane". Maybe evil, but not silly.

[Neil B.]

BTW, to what extent was it right or wrong to refer to the Nazis as "socialists" anyway?

[gordon]

NeilB, not right (to me), but the whole issue hinges on definitions - what do you think socialism is? It's a big and interesting question, and I recommend the Evans book I mentioned in an earlier comment.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

.


Just a small daily hoot: I happened to be rummaging around in a book stall, and I ran across the British Cabinet Minutes for 1929, which had just been freed (from the bizarre British D Notice and suchlike many-layered official paranoia.)

Here was the content: "Well, we gotta pay off the Americans, right? OK, switch it over from the India account."

I don't make this stuff up.

I am a highly intelligent and imaginative man, but even with all my powers there is no way I could catch up with the reality I run across out there.




.

[Thomas Themel]

NeilB: National socialism had a lot of features commonly associated with socialism or social democracy, like an extensive welfare state and high taxes on property owners, but confined to ethnic Germans.

A great book on the topic is "Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State" by Götz Aly, which details how the Nazis ravaged Europe and expropriated their own undesirables to finance the welfare of those deemed members of the "Volksgemeinschaft".