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The Wages of Destruction: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|'''''I have had enough of these demonstrations! They don’t harm the Jew, but me, who am the last authority for coordinating the German economy.'''''}}
* [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]: The Hunger Plan. This was a plan by the Reich Ministry for Food and Wehrmacht economists to deliberately starve over 30 million Soviets to death in order to free up food for German use, spelled out in very exact terms and with that name on the plan itself in 1941.
* [[Fascist but Inefficient]]: This was noted as a recurring issue. Just because Hitler ran a state that gave him nigh absolute power did not translate into making any issues
* [[For Want of a Nail]]: While Tooze is careful to avoid generalizations for the most part, one of his big assertions is that Germany might have never taken Hitler seriously had the Depression not made him look like a prophet.
* [[Greedy Jew]]: Tooze makes perfectly clear if you want to have a starting point to understand the Nazis in term of economics, you must acknowledge they took this trope in absolute seriousness and patterned all their assumptions after it, no matter how true it actually was.
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* [[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.
** Tooze spends a fair amount of time deconstructing one that was built up concerning how Albert Speer was credited with keeping the Nazi economy going in the later half of the war. He does note the substance of the myth wasn't, by itself, lies, as Speer did wield great influence over the economy and did implement actual measures to reform the economic system, but most of what actually applied to the practical implementation was firmly in the realm of this trope, as Tooze explains in exhaustive detail.
* [[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.''''''}}
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