The Wages of Destruction: Difference between revisions

* [[Plausible Deniability]]: [[Discussed]] and ultimately mocked. While even back to the Weimar Republic Germany always wanted to rearm in direct defiance of the Versailles Treaty, the economic side was initially well hidden and the scale of the plans were fairly modest to invoke this trope. By the time of [[Nazi Germany]], they quit trying to even pretend this trope was in effect and by 1934 an imbecile could tell exactly what they were doing, pathetically weak denials to the contrary.

* [[Reality Ensues]]: This trope kneecapped a lot of what the Nazis wanted to do because they were often trying to secure much more resources than they could on a shoestring budget, and the results of this was an obvious deficit of actual return for investment in industry, jobs, and general long-term solvency.

** The Reichsmark as a tool of foreign exchange was hobbled out the gate because, unlike many other countries that removed their currency from a backing on gold, Germany refused to let their currency float for fear it would further devalue it on the world market. This was not an inaccurate assessment, but it had the natural consequence of jacking up the price of trading the German mark (or not allowing the price to fluctuate, which had the same effect) for any other currency to the point it was a popular as a plague rat on the world market.

* [[Right for the Wrong Reasons]]: When Hitler's Jew paranoia was stripped away, Tooze notes Hitler did have many salient and relevant observations about the economy, albeit even this was through a heavily slanted lens aimed at Hitler's specific long-term objectives.

* [[Pyrrhic Victory]]: The Nazi regime initially wanted to encourage Jewish emigration and did just that early on. Unfortunately, economics made the victory a pointless one. To secure a visa for a foreign nation, the Jews who left had to be allowed to leave with enough hard currency to purchase one, which directly contributed to massive drain on the Reichsmark reserves of the German banks, which they could not afford since during the period of 1933-34 especially, they were teetering on utter bankruptcy, so the victory was not only hollow, it even became a bigger problem than the solution by ultimately reducing emigration.

* [[Too Clever by Half]]: Not long after Hitler took power, he sought to remove the economic shackles that bound Germany to the American and European markets. It succeeded, which was essential to preventing what he considered an economic straitjacket that would otherwise apply later on where those parties could squeeze Germany dry. However, it succeeded a bit too well, as it made Germany an outlaw nation in terms of financial credit, cutting off several sources of funding that otherwise could have bolstered the economy later, and still left late 1930's Germany in an economically regressed state in the long-term despite outwards signs of growth. The second item would be a chicken come home to roost later in the WWII period as Germany found itself even more destitute than it was after WWI.

* [[Urban Legend of Zelda]]: The "autobahns" were commonly assumed to be a massive success and and an active part of the Nazi regime's internal construction. As Tooze points out, it proved to be of negligible importance due to funding and labor issues, despite a bunch of early noise and hoopla given the program, though said propaganda was effective enough to make the trope a reality anyway.