Reassessing the Nazi War Economy and the Origins of the Second World War
An Introduction to a Symposium on Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Alexander Anievas in
Current site
Google Scholar
Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction has received a fair amount of scholarly attention since its publication in 2006, particularly among historians. What has received much less attention, however, are the many theoretical insights to be gleaned from Tooze’s history of the inner-workings of the Nazi war economy in the lead-up to the Second World War. This is particularly true of the numerous theoretical subjects and themes covered by Tooze of direct relevance to Marxist theories and understandings of Nazism. From his analysis of the relationship between Nazi economic policies and Hitler’s geopolitical objectives to the relations between capital and state to the specificities of Nazism as a distinct ideological and cultural apparatus to the role of the Nazi regime in triggering the 1939 cataclysm – in all these ways, Tooze’s work speaks to a number of core issues at the heart of Marxist debates on Nazism, fascism, and the causes of the Second World War. This introduction outlines a number of these themes and more in Tooze’s work, contextualising them within extant Marxist debates on Nazism, before then going on to highlight some of the main arguments and criticisms advanced in the symposium.
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Abraham David The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis 1986 Second Edition New York Holmes & Meier
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Aly Götz Chase Jefferson Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State 2007 New York Metropolitan
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Anievas Alexander Capital, the State, and War: Class Conflict and Geopolitics in the Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945 2014 Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press
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Baranowski Shelley Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler 2011 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Barkai Avraham Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory, and Policy 1990 New Haven Yale University Press
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Beetham David Marxists in Face of Fascism: Writings by Marxists on Fascism from the Inter-War Years 1983 Manchester Manchester University Press
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Berghahn Volker R. ‘Big Business in the Third Reich’ European History Quarterly 1991 21 1 97 108
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Bloch Ernest ‘Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics’ New German Critique 1975 [1932] 11 22 38
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Callinicos Alex ‘Plumbing the Depths: Marxism and the Holocaust’ The Yale Journal of Criticism 2001 14 2 385 414
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Caplan Jane ‘Theories of Fascism: Nicos Poulantzas as Historian’ History Workshop 1977 3 83 100
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Czichon Eberhard ‘Der Primat der Industrie im Kartell der nationalsozialistischen Macht’ Das Argument 1968 47 167 92
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Davidson Neil Saull Richard, Anievas Alexander, Davidson Neil & Fabry Adam ‘The Far-Right and the Needs of Capital’ The Longue Durée of the Far-Right: An International Historical Sociology 2015 Abingdon Routledge
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Dobkowski Michael N. & Wallimann Isidor Radical Perspectives on the Rise of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1945 1989 New York Monthly Review Press
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Eichholtz Dietrich & Gossweiler Kurt ‘Noch einmal: Politik und Wirtschaft 1933–1945’ Das Argument 1968 47 210 27
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Eley Geoff ‘What Produces Fascism: Preindustrial Traditions or a Crisis of a Capitalist State’ Politics & Society 1983 12 1 53 82
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Feldman Gerald D. Nicosia Francis R. & Huener Jonathan ‘Financial Institutions in Nazi Germany: Reluctant or Willing Collaborators?’ Business and Industry in Nazi Germany 2004 New York Berghahn Books
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Geary Dick Stachura Peter D. ‘The Industrial Elites and the Nazis in the Weimar Republic’ The Nazi Machtergreifung 1983 London Allen and Unwin
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Gluckstein Donny The Nazis, Capitalism and the Working Class 1999 London Bookmarks
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Gramsci Antonio Hoare Quintin & Nowell-Smith Geoffrey Selections from the Prison Notebooks 1971 [1929–35] London Lawrence & Wishart
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Guérin Daniel Frances & Merrill Mason Fascism and Big Business 1973 [1945] London Pathfinder Press
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Hayes Peter Industry and Ideology: ig Farben in the Nazi Era 2001 New Edition, Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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Heinz Roth Karl ‘Wages of Destruction? A Reappraisal’ Historical Materialism 2014 22 3/4 298 311
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Hitler Adolf & Weinberg Gerhard L. Weinberg Gerhard L. Smith Krista Hitler’s Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf 2003 New York Enigma Books
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James Harold The Nazi Dictatorship and the Deutsche Bank 2004 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
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James Harold ‘Review of The Wages of Destruction’ Central European History 2007 40 2 366 71
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Jaskot Paul ‘Building the Nazi Economy: Adam Tooze and a Cultural Critique of Hitler’s Plans for War’ Historical Materialism 2014 22 3/4 312 329
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Leitz Christian Nazi Foreign Policy, 1933–1941: The Road to Global War 2004 London Routledge
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Mandel Ernest The Meaning of the Second World War 1986 London Verso
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Mason Tim ‘Der Primat der Politik – Politik und Wirtschaft im Nationalsozialismus’ Das Argument 1966 41 473 93
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Mason Tim ‘Primat der Industrie? – Eine Erwiderung’ Das Argument 1968 47 193 209
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Mason Tim ‘Germany, “Domestic Crisis” and War in 1939’ Past & Present 1989 122 1 205 21
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Tooze Adam ‘Economics, Ideology and Cohesion in the Third Reich: A Critique of Goetz Aly’s Hitlers Volksstaat’ Dapim Lecheker HaShoah 2006a 20 English-language version available at: <http://adamtooze.commons.yale.edu/files/2012/10/Tooze-Article-on-Aly-for-Dapim-Lecheker-HaShoah-Sep-2006-Corrected.pdf>.
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Tooze Adam The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi War Economy 2007 Harmondsworth Penguin Books
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Tooze Adam The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 2014a London Allen Lane
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Tooze Adam ‘The Sense of a Vacuum: A Response’ Historical Materialism 2014b 22 3/4 351 370
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Tooze Adam Anievas Alexander ‘Capitalist Peace or Capitalist War? The July Crisis Revisited’ Cataclysm 1914: The First World War and the Making of Modern World Politics 2015 Leiden Brill Book Series Historical Materialism
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Trotsky Leon The Struggle against Fascism in Germany 1975 [1930–40] Harmondsworth Penguin Books
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Turner Henry Ashby German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler 1985 New York Oxford University Press
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Vajda Mihály Fascism as a Mass Movement 1976 Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan
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Volkmann Hans-Erich Deist Wilhelm ‘The National Socialist Economy in Preparation for War’ Germany and the Second World War, Volume i: The Build-up of German Aggression 1990 Oxford Oxford University Press
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1
See Stokes 2007, p. 421; James 2007, p. 366.
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4
Eley 1983; Abraham 1986; Mason 1995. See further, Kitchen 1976; Caplan 1977; Geary 1983; Mandel 1986; Gluckstein 1999; Callinicos 2001; Milchman 2003; Davidson 2015.
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5
Overy 1995.
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6
Tooze 2007, p. 11.
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7
Hitler and Weinberg 2003, pp. 114, 116. Hitler here refers to an ‘American union’, as he anticipated the us would incorporate Canada into a single political bloc.
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8
Hitler and Weinberg 2003, p. 26.
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11
Tooze 2007, pp. xxiv–xxv. Elsewhere, Tooze describes interwar Germany ‘as a society characterized by very uneven development’ (Tooze 2007, p. 212), a point further drawn out in Chapter 6.
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12
Hitler and Weinberg 2003, p. 107.
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13
Tooze 2007, p. 10.
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14
See Tooze 2007, 282–4, 324–5, 407–8, 657–8, 664–5.
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15
See Riley 2014, pp. 342–8.
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16
Tooze 2014b, pp. 361–4.
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17
Tooze 2007, p. 168.
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18
Tooze 2007, p. 167. The 1933 census counted no less than 9.342 million people (or 29% of the population) employed in the agricultural sector (Tooze 2007, p. 167).
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19
Tooze 2007, pp. 167, 179.
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20
See Tooze 2007, pp. 231–2, 659.
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21
Tooze 2006a, p. 4.
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22
Quoted in Tooze 2007, p. 317.
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24
Kershaw 1993, p. 111.
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25
Anievas 2014, pp. 162–3, 182.
-
27
Mason and Caplan 1993; Mason 1995.
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29
Tooze 2007, p. 334.
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30
See further, Tooze 2014b, p. 361.
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31
Heinz Roth 2014, pp. 305–6.
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32
Riley 2014, pp. 330–1.
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33
Riley 2014, p. 349.
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34
Tooze 2014b, p. 358. See further, Tooze 2014a and Tooze 2015.
-
35
Riley 2014, p. 335.
-
36
Riley 2014, p. 334.
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37
Overy 1995.
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38
Aly 2007; see Tooze 2006b.
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39
Most notably, Aly 2007.
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40
Tooze 2006a, p. 7.
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41
Berghahn 1991, p. 106; see, for example, Turner 1985; Hayes 2001; James 2004; Feldman 2004.
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43
See further, Volkmann 1990; Baranowski 2011, pp. 155–71; Anievas 2014, Chapter 5. For an interesting theoretical and historical discussion of the relationship between far-right movements and regimes and the interests of capital with reference to the Nazi period, see Davidson 2015.
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44
Tooze 2007, p. 134.
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46
Riley 2014, p. 339.
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Reassessing the Nazi War Economy and the Origins of the Second World War
An Introduction to a Symposium on Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction
In: Historical MaterialismSearch for other papers by Alexander Anievas in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction has received a fair amount of scholarly attention since its publication in 2006, particularly among historians. What has received much less attention, however, are the many theoretical insights to be gleaned from Tooze’s history of the inner-workings of the Nazi war economy in the lead-up to the Second World War. This is particularly true of the numerous theoretical subjects and themes covered by Tooze of direct relevance to Marxist theories and understandings of Nazism. From his analysis of the relationship between Nazi economic policies and Hitler’s geopolitical objectives to the relations between capital and state to the specificities of Nazism as a distinct ideological and cultural apparatus to the role of the Nazi regime in triggering the 1939 cataclysm – in all these ways, Tooze’s work speaks to a number of core issues at the heart of Marxist debates on Nazism, fascism, and the causes of the Second World War. This introduction outlines a number of these themes and more in Tooze’s work, contextualising them within extant Marxist debates on Nazism, before then going on to highlight some of the main arguments and criticisms advanced in the symposium.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1450 | 157 | 14 |
| Full Text Views | 678 | 42 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 666 | 94 | 4 |
