Chapter Two: Problem’s in the Reich’s economy
In 1938, the last full year of peace in Europe, Nazi Germany was already allocating 17 per cent of gross national product (GNP) to military spending. 178 Yet despite this already impressive expenditure on arms the Reich’s leadership sought to accelerate this expenditure following the Sudeten crisis. On 14 October 1938 at a conference at the Air Ministry Hermann Goering, the Reich Plenipotentiary of the Four Year Plan, announced that given ‘the world situation’ the ‘Fuehrer has issued an order … to carry out a gigantic programme compared to which previous achievements are insignificant’. 179 Nodding to the significant economic difficulties that were impeding rearmament Goering nonetheless announced that the Luftwaffe was to be increased in size by fivefold, the Kriegsmarine would be armed more rapidly, while the Heer would also procure more offensive weapons at a faster rate. 180 This would, in practice, have translated into a Luftwaffe with 21,750 aircraft by 1942, while the Heer had simply to complete and consolidate the build-up begun since 1936. 181 For the Kriegsmarine, whose gargantuan Plan Z was signed into force on 27 January 1939, it would be necessary to construct 6 large battleships, 249 U-boats and 8 cruisers for long range operations, and by 1948 the Kriegsmarine aimed to have constructed a total of 797 178 Adam Tooze and James R. Martin, ‘The economics of the war with Nazi Germany’, in The Cambridge History of the Second World War , ed. by Michael Geyer, (Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 36. 179 Conference at General Field Goering’s at 1000, 14 Oct. 38, in the Reich Air Ministry, in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol. III, (Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1946), p. 901, <https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_Nazi_Vol-III.pdf>, [10/03/2018]. 180 Ibid. 181 Tooze, p. 288.
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