The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

by Adam Tooze

By the late 1930s the price of a litre of petrol in the Third Reich stood at 39 Pfennigs (roughly $1.70 in dollars of 1990). At this price, a family outing of 160 kilometres in a fuel-efficient car cost an entire day’s work for the average German worker.49 Only a small fraction of this exorbitant price, however, was due to the market price for oil. Throughout the 1930s, given the worldwide glut of oil, the price of a litre of petrol in the Gulf of Mexico varied between 2 and 3 Pfennigs, around 10 per cent of the price charged to German motorists. Allowing for shipping, petrol could be had at Hamburg port for as little as 5.13 Pfennigs per litre. The costs of distribution and marketing added another 13 Pfennigs. The cost price for petrol, in other words, was probably around 20 Pfennigs per litre, the price paid by consumers in the United States.