The Wages of Destruction

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy is a book of historical non-fiction about the economical history of Nazi Germany by Adam Tooze. Starting after World War I, he traces the economic history of of Germany from the potentially different path the Weimar Republic pursued and then the Nazi government's economic policy until the end of 1945's ignominious end of World War II. Unlike many other histories, in which economics were subsumed into discussions of broader topics such the politics of the Nazi state, this book remains almost entirely focused on the economic aspects of the Nazi regime, with all other subjects secondary.

The book is in some ways a rebuttal of many claims both the Germans and the world believed as to the state of the Nazi economy both before and during the WWII years, with Tooze's analysis striving to separate economic fact from fiction as objectively as possible.

Tropes used in The Wages of Destruction include:

All There in the Manual: Both Mein Kampf and the "Second Book" (the follow-up to Mein Kampf) are extensively referenced for Hitler's specific economics related statements.
Bait and Switch: As Tooze explains, a common myth was the Nazis wanting to sponsor job creation programs for workers. The reality was that such had been considered and discredited under the Weimar regime as well as the Nazis, and when they finally were enacted, their true purpose was to jump start industry of military value, though sold to outside observers as an attempt to employ more labor that was unemployed.
Can't Catch Up: Due to the backwards agricultural sector of the German economy, under their existing system and due to the limited amount of arable land available to German farmers, they were doomed to this trope. Hitler's war plans were intended explicitly to remedy this.
David Versus Goliath: Tooze uses the United States to draw a line of comparison between the economic strength of Germany from 1870-1945 to it's American counterpart, noting they started out with the US at a slight disadvantage, but otherwise the US was definitely the economic goliath.
Deal with the Devil: The alliance between the Nazis and big business happened this way. Hitler essentially offered them absolute domestic control of their industries they had been dreaming about since the early 1920s, and they had to support his regime in return. They took this deal, with the full knowledge it came with the rider of establishing a huge slush fund for the Nazis to use however they saw fit and that the Nazis held the whip hand in making sure they could not back out of the deal later.
Deconstruction: Tooze deconstructs a lot of commonly held myths about the German economy, including Albert Speer's supposed "economic miracle" and the difference between what Germany produced during the Nazi period versus what it actually needed to produce and how the difference was much more profound than earlier histories indicated, often by a severe degree.
Divide and Conquer: Germany managed to welsh on it's war debt repayment thanks to this trope. When the Nazis fully welshed on the German debt repayment, the fact this left their European and American creditors (who had little leverage on Germany since they too had no money to encourage bilateral debt repayment) high and dry worked against the creditors, since they all needed to work in unison to put pressure on Germany, but their own desperate situations did not encourage them to do so, allowing the Nazi regime to walk away with little consequence and their creditors wound up the biggest losers.
- The Nazi regime achieved a similar use of this trope in seeking South American markets to replace the markets of the United States. It essentially scotched any attempt to cut Germany off at the ankles and the favorable terms encouraged places like Brazil to stiff the US with little consequence. End result was German markets free of a lot of US dependency and the US market position splintered on the Southern American front.
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.
Insane Troll Logic: The Nazi ideology outright prevented Germany from making any pragmatic changes to economic policy that would have been beneficial if it in any way conflicted with Hitler's preconceptions about the Jews. Due to Hitler's belief the United States was a key focus on the "Jewish conspiracy", any attempt at any form of modus vivendi in either the peacetime or war years was utterly off the table, even though all the proof of Hitler's contentions existed nowhere outside his own mind. Tooze even lays out evidence Hitler's beliefs were formulated very early based on the Weimar Republic years and being set in stone by the 1930s, which made this trope the prevailing condition of his regime.
- Part of the basis of all Hitler's economic logic that would follow was his contention the economic loans provided by the United States to assist in the reparations system set up after the Treaty of Versailles was little more than a Jewish banker sponsored plot to make sure Germany paid up and the Weimar officials who went along with it were the same ones who sold out the Germans and thus Germany needed to severe any economic dependence on that system. This resulted in Germany being denied otherwise viable sources of foreign capital that it could have used but was not considered at all under Nazi policy.
It Got Worse: Economically, the fate of Germany was sealed as soon as the pipeline of regular American funding and European loans when belly-up. After that, this trope was in full effect and directly contributed to Hitler's rise to power.
Magnificent Bastard: Hjalmar Schacht. During the 1930s, he found a deviously clever way to secure export capital without devaluing the German Reichsmark via direct policy. As Tooze explains:

The problem that now posed itself with ever greater urgency, however, was how to sustain German exports without a devaluation. A solution was found in the autumn of 1933 through a variety of schemes, all of which made use of the advantage that Germany had gained through the oratorium on its foreign debts. Either through a complicated system of buy-backs, or through manipulating the blocked accounts of the foreign creditors in Germany, the Reichsbank found ways of subsidizing Germany’s exporters at the expense of its creditors, earning Hjalmar Schacht his dubious reputation in the 1930s as the dark wizard of international finance.

The Man Behind The Man: Hitler was convinced, in an economic sense, the United States fit this goal, and Tooze notes, to a considerable extent, given the US did prop up the European economy, Hitler had a point insofar as their economic influence in securing markets went. Tooze does note Hitler went off into Conspiracy Theorist territory when he injected anti-Semitism into this logic, but he wasn't entirely wrong either.
Obstructive Bureaucracy: The Nazis loved this trope to the point the economy became so tied up in red tape they were the only ones who could make sense of it. While it bought limited stability during the peacetime years after some initial confusion, it all disintegrated later in the war because the resource squeeze left too many bureaucrats with too few resources to keep the economy moving.
Paper Tiger: In many ways, the Nazis had economic issues so vast they were downright laughable, which they only partially were able to conceal at best, but this concealment failed almost completely post-1943, revealing their economy to be even more pathetic than towards the end of WWI.
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.
- Hitler wanted Germany to have as little economic obligation to foreign market as possible. He got his wish, and that included the natural circumstance that since he effectively declared Germany a faithless debtor, even if absolute desperation demanded they play nice even temporarily for foreign capital to prop up the domestic currency reserve, Hitler had doomed Germany to being stiffed by creditors who saw Germany as a terrible risk as a natural consequence.
- 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.
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:

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.'