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

by Adam Tooze

In an all-out arms race with the ‘democracies’, time was clearly not on Germany’s side.88 If one gave credence to Thomas’s figures, if the democracies were already outspending Germany by 2 billion Reichsmarks in 1939, with the United States making a minimal contribution, how large might their advantage be in a few years’ time? This argument applied with most force to the Luftwaffe, where the extraordinarily rapid development of aviation technology in the 1930s had the effect of levelling the international playing field. Despite Goering’s periodic outbursts, it was clear that the British were concentrating all available resources on the Royal Air Force, first as a defensive, but ultimately also as an offensive threat. There was no reason to believe that the German aircraft industry enjoyed any pronounced technical superiority over the British. Though intelligence was faulty on both sides, as of the spring of 1939, British aircraft production matched that of the Third Reich. In the short term, on the other hand, due to the rapid pace of expansion since 1933, the German air force still enjoyed a clear margin of superiority both in terms of the number of combat-worthy aircraft and in terms of overall war readiness.