The Wages of Destruction: Difference between revisions

* [[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.

* [[What Could Have Been]]: Tooze notes Hitler might have never risen to power had the circumstances between 1918-1933 turned out much different. In fact, as he summarizes it:

{{quote|'''''One of the many extraordinary features of German politics in the aftermath of World War I is that throughout the existence of the Weimar Republic the German electorate faced a choice between a politics centred on the peaceful pursuit of national prosperity and a militant nationalism that more or less openly demanded a resumption of hostilities with France, Britain and the United States. Since most of this book will be taken up with a dissection of the way in which Hitler harnessed the German economy in pursuit of this latter option, it seems important to begin by clearly establishing the alternative against which his vision was framed and how that alternative was pushed out of view by the disastrous events leading up to Hitler’s seizure of power.''''''}}