In 1939, as the war started, the combined GDP of the British and French empires exceeded that of Germany and Italy by 60 per cent. Of course, the idea of inherent German economic superiority was not simply a figment of the historical imagination. Germany from the late nineteenth century onwards was the home for a cluster of world-beating industrial companies. Brand names like Krupp, Siemens and IG Farben gave substance to the myth of German industrial invincibility. Viewed in wider terms, however, the German economy differed little from the European average: its national per capita income in
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