The Wages of Destruction is a non-fiction book detailing the economic history of Nazi Germany. Written by Adam Tooze, it was first published by Allen Lane in 2006.
The Wages of Destruction won the Wolfson History Prize and the 2007 Longman/History Today Book of the Year Prize. It was published to critical praise from such authors as Michael Burleigh, Richard Overy and Niall Ferguson.
The book argues that, having failed to defeat Britain in 1940 the economic logic of the war drove the Nazis to invade the Soviet Union (to capture the level of natural resources needed to challenge the economic superpower of America) but in doing so was sealing its own destruction as it was precisely that lack of resources that made a victory against the Soviet Union impossible as the Soviet Union was eventually able to get access to US aid as well as rely on its own resources.
The book makes the case for the economic impact of the strategic bombing campaign (though argues that the wrong targets were often selected), challenges the idea of an economic miracle under Albert Speer and rejects the idea that the German economy could have mobilised significantly more women into the war economy.
External links
- Material connected to A. Tooze, Wages of Destruction (London, 2006) at the University of Cambridge.
