Ganz zur Ausschöpfung: the German war economy and corporate profiteering
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2020-08-20
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en
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In researching the German war economy during the Second World War, earlier researchers have found that the economy was only fully geared for war in the final years of the conflict. I posit instead that German economic exertions for war went to the utmost from the very beginning. The dual nature of the qualitatively different wars to be fought, against the Soviet-Union and the Anglo-Saxon Allies, has confounded this tendency. The conflict with the Soviet-Union demanded output of weaponry for the German army while the conflict with the Anglo-Saxon Allies necessitated far larger weapon systems (e.g. battleship, aircraft carriers and strategic bombers) for which the backward German economy lacked the productive capabilities. Corporate profiteering during the first years of the conflict facilitated the investments in such long-term productive capabilities. Only when the strategic situation definitely turned against Hitlerite Germany did policymakers adopt more coercive measures, including a curtailment of corporate profiteering, to boost short-term armament output, with which to hold of the advancing Soviets on the Eastern front, and later the Anglo-Saxons Allies on the Western front.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen