production of all goods in peacetime. It is not wrong to suggest then, as the Bundeswehr’s Research Institute for Military History did, that ‘without inroads into foreign states or attacks on the property of others’ it would be impossible to keep to the current rearmament course. 206 In late 1938, Nazi Germany approached some semblance of clarity and coherence on its economic strategy for rearmament, that would sit alongside its diplomatic strategy that would have prepared it for war. And yet, just as in the sphere of diplomacy, the Reich’s economic plans had scarcely begun to unfold before they too suffered setbacks and reversals. This paints a picture of a regime that, while not in crisis, was increasingly unable to control the pace of events in any sphere it turned its attention to. Indeed, Karl Krauch, the head of the Reich Office for Economic Expansion, wrote a despairing memorandum in which he stated that: ‘it seemed as if [German] political leadership would have the possibility of solely determining the time and scale of the political transformation of Europe – whilst avoiding a confrontation with the power group led by England. Since March of this year [1939] there can no longer be any doubt that this possibility no longer exists.’ 207 Such despair was motivated by the increasingly desperate conditions prevailing in the German economy that were holding it back from further rearmament in 1939. From the balance of payments deficit to the associated shortages of raw materials, and its overstretched workforce, the Reich was increasingly pushing the limit of what was economically possible in peacetime. As such, it became increasingly
206 Wilhelm Diest et al, p. 350. 207 Tooze, pp. 307-308.
101
Made with FlippingBook HTML5