Your book review got me to read The Wages of Destruction (2006) and its prequel The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 (2014). Thank you.
I think you make Tooze out to be more of an economic determinist than he actually is. Yes, Germany in its 1938 boundaries was never going to be self-sufficient in food or fuel. Yes, there was lots of arable land in the lands to the west, as well as oil in Romania and the Caucasus. Hell, every German knew that and probably had a sort of wistful feeling that it would be great to expand in that direction. But they also knew that Europe was already "filled up" and they couldn't do that without killing or expelling the people who lived there. Which was the end of the dream for most people, including most politicians. Hitler, and the Nazis, were unique in taking the fantasy to its logical conclusion.
But why were they willing to go that far? For that, Tooze says, you need ideology. Most obviously, there was the idea of superior and inferior races. But there was also the idea that there existed a powerful Jewish conspiracy that manipulated the nations of the world and that would deliberately keep the Germans down. It already controlled the Soviet Union and in the west its chief agent was FDR. They wouldn't be content to keep Germany as a workshop. They wanted it to be a vassal, an all-but-colony, and the German people would suffer from that and never be able to escape.
So it was necessary to smash them both, and since they were obviously bigger than Germany, it had to be done soon, before they could ramp up their own militaries. So the invasion of the Soviet Union, and the declaration of war on the United States at the end of 1941.
And there was just luck, or given the final result, bad luck. Hitler had repeatedly "pushed the envelope", done what people said couldn't be done, got back the Rhineland, merged with Austria, brought Czechoslovakia into the Empire, and finally conquered France in record time. He, and more important, the people and government thought he could perform almost miracles. So there was no effective resistance to Operation Barbarossa. Or to continuing the war after Stalingrad.
Really pleased to hear someone read the book because of the review, and bloody hell you read fast, I'm still only half way through Deluge (interested on how you think it compares to WoD btw, I can't decide if it's much less interesting or even more revelatory so far).
I would have liked more discussion/clarity (maybe even consistency) on the ideological angle from Tooze as well, he does say pro-genocide views were around among nationalist during WW1 and became more popular afterwards, but he doesn't give any numbers on how prevalent they were. Probably he disproportionately focused on the econ because it's more interesting and novel, and I further emphasised the econ aspects of the book for the same reason.
Another book that makes a strong case against the ideological/irrational interpretation imo is The Tragedy of Great Power Politics that makes the Realist interpretation of the war. The Realist analysis suggests that WW1 didn't produce a stable international system after the British hegemony was eclipsed, and especially since the US surpassed Britain economically after WW1, so that another conflict was almost inevitable. If there was a widespread expectation of another war among the Great Powers it's not surprising that Germany might initiate a conflict at an opportune moment, particularly if it stood to gain the most economically and couldn't expect to win a longer war of attrition.
Between Tooz's econ analysis and the Realists analysis there's not much room for standard ideological/irrationality explanations imo.
Not nearly so fast. I read your review when the ACX book review list first came out, and then decided to start with Deluge (with a lot in between).
One of the things I liked about both books (perhaps more Deluge than WoD) is that while Tooze is at great pains to describe the underlying economic situations--the constraints under which people acted--he is also very clear that people made decisions that could have been different. They were not just swept along by impersonal historical forces. E.g., Germany was never going to be able to feed itself, and there was lots of fertile land to the east. But nobody was forced to invade Poland or the Soviet Union. That was a conscious decision. And though economics played a part, so did ideology and history and culture. The starvation of Germans during WW I gave it a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. And the idea of lebensraum, that Germany was just too small, was a cultural thing that made policies of expansion easier to conceive and get accepted.
Now I feel like I should read The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. The top review at Amazon contains the following: "according to this idea, the reason Germany went to war was not because they were nationalistic or inherently violent, or because of the ideological differences between fascism, capitalism, and communism, or because wanted to purify Europe of undesirable races, or even that they were angry over the conditions imposed on them after WW1 (though that's part of it), but simply because Germany feared being conquered and wanted to become the most powerful nation in Europe to make sure they would survive."
I felt like yelling, "Embrace the power of 'and'!"
I thought a really good, interesting, book that made obvious some of the problems with putting Realism into practice--or even deciding exactly what it is--was Barry Gewen's The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (2020).
Germany had a relatively (compared to other belligerents of the time) brutal nationalist government during WW1, but it wasn't anywhere near that genocidal. The imperial government expected to rule over the inhabitants of conquered territory, not kill them all off. Hitler was a real divergence, planning from the beginning to starve Soviet POWs rather than treat them as ordinary captured soldiers (which was more the case on the western front). Jews were being shot in the "Holocaust of bullets" on the eastern front early on as well. Jews further back sent to camps might experience the "holocaust of gas" or be impressed into slave labor depending on whether there was a more pressing need for labor or food at the time. They also started trying to recruit Soviet POWs later on, so in that case it went in the opposite direction of prioritizing food over time from what you describe.
Hitler did indeed hope to gain resources by invading the USSR... but he was already getting those resources for cheap from Stalin. That's part of why Stalin refused to believe warnings that Hitler would invade. The Soviets of course sabotaged their oil infrastructure before the Germans could seize it, so they didn't get that much oil out of it (whereas they'd previously been buying that same oil).
Hitler was a Malthusian who thought Germany's population would starve if he didn't obtain more lebensraum. With the benefit of hindsight we can say he was completely wrong about that.
That might be right, I'm not an authority on WW2 by any means, but I think Tooze would respond to those arguments something like this :
From what I remember, Tooze claims pro-large-scale-genocide views were around during WW1 among nationalists, but weren't the mainstream view, and became more popular after the food shortages lost them WW1.
He didn't really give a clear answer why Germany couldn't just keep trading with the USSR instead of invading, but it was definitely a precarious position for Germany to be in, and presumably the terms weren't very favourable. I still think the invasion could be interpreted as a rational decision, particularly if Hitler expected an easy victory, like in WW1.
I'm not sure the timing of who got starved when, or who got shot instead of starved is very strong evidence, since the Nazis were acting in anticipation of future shortages more than reacting in the moment.
> I still think the invasion could be interpreted as a rational decision, particularly if Hitler expected an easy victory, like in WW1.
My understanding is that the General Staff did a wargame which concluded that the Wehrmacht would need a much larger invasion force than they had available to succeed. Hitler ignored that, because he was a gambler who had taken risks and succeeded when his generals were more cautious before.
> He didn't really give a clear answer why Germany couldn't just keep trading with the USSR instead of invading, but it was definitely a precarious position for Germany to be in, and presumably the terms weren't very favourable.
My recollection of TIK on Youtube discussing the issue is that they expected over time any trading partner would develop their own manufacturing capacity (and Germany was selling them manufactured goods useful for building that up), and then no longer want to trade raw materials for manufactured goods. Industrializing would also make the USSR harder to conquer in the future.
Your book review got me to read The Wages of Destruction (2006) and its prequel The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 (2014). Thank you.
I think you make Tooze out to be more of an economic determinist than he actually is. Yes, Germany in its 1938 boundaries was never going to be self-sufficient in food or fuel. Yes, there was lots of arable land in the lands to the west, as well as oil in Romania and the Caucasus. Hell, every German knew that and probably had a sort of wistful feeling that it would be great to expand in that direction. But they also knew that Europe was already "filled up" and they couldn't do that without killing or expelling the people who lived there. Which was the end of the dream for most people, including most politicians. Hitler, and the Nazis, were unique in taking the fantasy to its logical conclusion.
But why were they willing to go that far? For that, Tooze says, you need ideology. Most obviously, there was the idea of superior and inferior races. But there was also the idea that there existed a powerful Jewish conspiracy that manipulated the nations of the world and that would deliberately keep the Germans down. It already controlled the Soviet Union and in the west its chief agent was FDR. They wouldn't be content to keep Germany as a workshop. They wanted it to be a vassal, an all-but-colony, and the German people would suffer from that and never be able to escape.
So it was necessary to smash them both, and since they were obviously bigger than Germany, it had to be done soon, before they could ramp up their own militaries. So the invasion of the Soviet Union, and the declaration of war on the United States at the end of 1941.
And there was just luck, or given the final result, bad luck. Hitler had repeatedly "pushed the envelope", done what people said couldn't be done, got back the Rhineland, merged with Austria, brought Czechoslovakia into the Empire, and finally conquered France in record time. He, and more important, the people and government thought he could perform almost miracles. So there was no effective resistance to Operation Barbarossa. Or to continuing the war after Stalingrad.
Really pleased to hear someone read the book because of the review, and bloody hell you read fast, I'm still only half way through Deluge (interested on how you think it compares to WoD btw, I can't decide if it's much less interesting or even more revelatory so far).
I would have liked more discussion/clarity (maybe even consistency) on the ideological angle from Tooze as well, he does say pro-genocide views were around among nationalist during WW1 and became more popular afterwards, but he doesn't give any numbers on how prevalent they were. Probably he disproportionately focused on the econ because it's more interesting and novel, and I further emphasised the econ aspects of the book for the same reason.
Another book that makes a strong case against the ideological/irrational interpretation imo is The Tragedy of Great Power Politics that makes the Realist interpretation of the war. The Realist analysis suggests that WW1 didn't produce a stable international system after the British hegemony was eclipsed, and especially since the US surpassed Britain economically after WW1, so that another conflict was almost inevitable. If there was a widespread expectation of another war among the Great Powers it's not surprising that Germany might initiate a conflict at an opportune moment, particularly if it stood to gain the most economically and couldn't expect to win a longer war of attrition.
Between Tooz's econ analysis and the Realists analysis there's not much room for standard ideological/irrationality explanations imo.
Not nearly so fast. I read your review when the ACX book review list first came out, and then decided to start with Deluge (with a lot in between).
One of the things I liked about both books (perhaps more Deluge than WoD) is that while Tooze is at great pains to describe the underlying economic situations--the constraints under which people acted--he is also very clear that people made decisions that could have been different. They were not just swept along by impersonal historical forces. E.g., Germany was never going to be able to feed itself, and there was lots of fertile land to the east. But nobody was forced to invade Poland or the Soviet Union. That was a conscious decision. And though economics played a part, so did ideology and history and culture. The starvation of Germans during WW I gave it a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. And the idea of lebensraum, that Germany was just too small, was a cultural thing that made policies of expansion easier to conceive and get accepted.
Now I feel like I should read The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. The top review at Amazon contains the following: "according to this idea, the reason Germany went to war was not because they were nationalistic or inherently violent, or because of the ideological differences between fascism, capitalism, and communism, or because wanted to purify Europe of undesirable races, or even that they were angry over the conditions imposed on them after WW1 (though that's part of it), but simply because Germany feared being conquered and wanted to become the most powerful nation in Europe to make sure they would survive."
I felt like yelling, "Embrace the power of 'and'!"
I thought a really good, interesting, book that made obvious some of the problems with putting Realism into practice--or even deciding exactly what it is--was Barry Gewen's The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World (2020).
"arguably not too destructive to its national character, certainly it hasn’t led to “race death“."
Sure, ethnic Germans are just halving in number each generation.
Germany had a relatively (compared to other belligerents of the time) brutal nationalist government during WW1, but it wasn't anywhere near that genocidal. The imperial government expected to rule over the inhabitants of conquered territory, not kill them all off. Hitler was a real divergence, planning from the beginning to starve Soviet POWs rather than treat them as ordinary captured soldiers (which was more the case on the western front). Jews were being shot in the "Holocaust of bullets" on the eastern front early on as well. Jews further back sent to camps might experience the "holocaust of gas" or be impressed into slave labor depending on whether there was a more pressing need for labor or food at the time. They also started trying to recruit Soviet POWs later on, so in that case it went in the opposite direction of prioritizing food over time from what you describe.
Hitler did indeed hope to gain resources by invading the USSR... but he was already getting those resources for cheap from Stalin. That's part of why Stalin refused to believe warnings that Hitler would invade. The Soviets of course sabotaged their oil infrastructure before the Germans could seize it, so they didn't get that much oil out of it (whereas they'd previously been buying that same oil).
Hitler was a Malthusian who thought Germany's population would starve if he didn't obtain more lebensraum. With the benefit of hindsight we can say he was completely wrong about that.
That might be right, I'm not an authority on WW2 by any means, but I think Tooze would respond to those arguments something like this :
From what I remember, Tooze claims pro-large-scale-genocide views were around during WW1 among nationalists, but weren't the mainstream view, and became more popular after the food shortages lost them WW1.
He didn't really give a clear answer why Germany couldn't just keep trading with the USSR instead of invading, but it was definitely a precarious position for Germany to be in, and presumably the terms weren't very favourable. I still think the invasion could be interpreted as a rational decision, particularly if Hitler expected an easy victory, like in WW1.
I'm not sure the timing of who got starved when, or who got shot instead of starved is very strong evidence, since the Nazis were acting in anticipation of future shortages more than reacting in the moment.
> I still think the invasion could be interpreted as a rational decision, particularly if Hitler expected an easy victory, like in WW1.
My understanding is that the General Staff did a wargame which concluded that the Wehrmacht would need a much larger invasion force than they had available to succeed. Hitler ignored that, because he was a gambler who had taken risks and succeeded when his generals were more cautious before.
> He didn't really give a clear answer why Germany couldn't just keep trading with the USSR instead of invading, but it was definitely a precarious position for Germany to be in, and presumably the terms weren't very favourable.
My recollection of TIK on Youtube discussing the issue is that they expected over time any trading partner would develop their own manufacturing capacity (and Germany was selling them manufactured goods useful for building that up), and then no longer want to trade raw materials for manufactured goods. Industrializing would also make the USSR harder to conquer in the future.