The Wages of Destruction
- Richard Hargreaves
- Member
- Posts: 1321
- Joined: 04 Jul 2003, 23:48
- Location: Portsmouth, England
There is a fair bit about it on the web, including at Tooze's university staff-member webpage. His webpage has, for example, a fairly elaborate excel spreadsheet with multiple worksheets showing much of the source data used in his book. Also, either there or elsewhere - I forget now - I've come across a PDF'd article by Tooze that appears to be some precursor work to WoD.
I wrote this for somewhere else but it might be of interest to members of the forum who have not yet been tempted by Tooze:
Sometimes professional reviewers seem to find minor (and even non-existant) quibbles in order not to sound like they are praising a book too highly.
The vast majority of reviews I’ve read of this book seem to fall into this category. I’ve seen Tooze criticised for minimising the role of the Eastern Front (totally untrue) as well as being criticised for being overly enthusiastic about finding a nugget of information which has remained hidden for sixty years (which seems to be an exceptionally harsh view to take when the nugget is pure gold).
Tooze has written a masterpiece. No doubt, in future years, his ideas will be refined and synthesised by new knowledge but The Wages of Destruction will be seen as the starting point of how we view the Third Reich and World War 2 from an economic perspective. Much of the research is not new, although there are substantial portions which are, but the key to this epic is the way Tooze manages and uses his sources to tie them together into as coherent a whole as we are likely to see for the ‘mad logic’ of the Third Reich. And to do it in such a way as to make it accessible to non-specialists in economic history.
To those without an economics background the first few chapters are sometimes very tough going. Tooze sets out the economic and social framework which shaped Nazi party ideology and policies for the twelve years it was in power. Despite the nature of the material, Tooze has a light touch and an infectious enthusiasm for the subject which kept me gripped. It’s tough material to digest but Tooze does do an excellent job of making it as accessible as it is ever likely to get.
As war becomes reality, Tooze uses the latest research work to intermesh the economic situation of Germany with German conduct of the war. His treatment of genocide as a synthesis of both economics and ideology is worthy of especial commendation. Whilst in no way minimising the horror of the holocaust for the Jews, Tooze also points out the millions of other victims of Hitler’s colonial adventure in the east who died from starvation and slave labour in order to keep Hitler’s war going. Whilst it builds upon the research of Aly and Gerlach, Tooze offers a much broader perspective than I’ve yet to read from either of these two excellent historians.
The dissection of the role of Speer and the brutal tackling of the legend of the ‘economic’ miracle are particularly effective. Bomber Command, it would seem, was actually very effective in mid to late 1943 in disrupting German industry. For me, the real revelation of the book was in just how much of the Speer myth is based in the propaganda of the war which Speer somehow managed to continue to perpetuate after amazingly escaping the death sentence at Nuremburg. The picture of Speer Tooze draws from the contemporary sources is one totally at odds with the one which we have been fed for the past sixty years.
I really cannot praise this work highly enough. We, as readers, need to send out a message to the publishers of works on World War 2 that serious academic works are of interest to us and that we are mature enough to read them. I’d much rather an academic with 1/10 the talent and panache of Tooze be published than see yet another trite and worthless version of “Hitler’s Superweapons” or “The SS – Evil Monsters.”
Sometimes professional reviewers seem to find minor (and even non-existant) quibbles in order not to sound like they are praising a book too highly.
The vast majority of reviews I’ve read of this book seem to fall into this category. I’ve seen Tooze criticised for minimising the role of the Eastern Front (totally untrue) as well as being criticised for being overly enthusiastic about finding a nugget of information which has remained hidden for sixty years (which seems to be an exceptionally harsh view to take when the nugget is pure gold).
Tooze has written a masterpiece. No doubt, in future years, his ideas will be refined and synthesised by new knowledge but The Wages of Destruction will be seen as the starting point of how we view the Third Reich and World War 2 from an economic perspective. Much of the research is not new, although there are substantial portions which are, but the key to this epic is the way Tooze manages and uses his sources to tie them together into as coherent a whole as we are likely to see for the ‘mad logic’ of the Third Reich. And to do it in such a way as to make it accessible to non-specialists in economic history.
To those without an economics background the first few chapters are sometimes very tough going. Tooze sets out the economic and social framework which shaped Nazi party ideology and policies for the twelve years it was in power. Despite the nature of the material, Tooze has a light touch and an infectious enthusiasm for the subject which kept me gripped. It’s tough material to digest but Tooze does do an excellent job of making it as accessible as it is ever likely to get.
As war becomes reality, Tooze uses the latest research work to intermesh the economic situation of Germany with German conduct of the war. His treatment of genocide as a synthesis of both economics and ideology is worthy of especial commendation. Whilst in no way minimising the horror of the holocaust for the Jews, Tooze also points out the millions of other victims of Hitler’s colonial adventure in the east who died from starvation and slave labour in order to keep Hitler’s war going. Whilst it builds upon the research of Aly and Gerlach, Tooze offers a much broader perspective than I’ve yet to read from either of these two excellent historians.
The dissection of the role of Speer and the brutal tackling of the legend of the ‘economic’ miracle are particularly effective. Bomber Command, it would seem, was actually very effective in mid to late 1943 in disrupting German industry. For me, the real revelation of the book was in just how much of the Speer myth is based in the propaganda of the war which Speer somehow managed to continue to perpetuate after amazingly escaping the death sentence at Nuremburg. The picture of Speer Tooze draws from the contemporary sources is one totally at odds with the one which we have been fed for the past sixty years.
I really cannot praise this work highly enough. We, as readers, need to send out a message to the publishers of works on World War 2 that serious academic works are of interest to us and that we are mature enough to read them. I’d much rather an academic with 1/10 the talent and panache of Tooze be published than see yet another trite and worthless version of “Hitler’s Superweapons” or “The SS – Evil Monsters.”
Nearly two years ago I asked some questions which seem to be covered in this book. At university, we lightly touched upon some of these issues but I have not been able to find any good literature on the subject (I threw away my uni notes which included some good sourcing... ).
Mr Zebedee, thanks for the well written review and for the heads up!
Mr Zebedee, thanks for the well written review and for the heads up!
A review of the book has now been added to the site: http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=8136
/Marcus
/Marcus
I think that there is a lot of room for Tooze to follow up this work. It's really obvious he was having to compress a lot whilst also addressing a more general readership.Bronsky wrote:Tooze's book is excellent. Being a little more than a layman, I would have loved a more in-depth discussion of Speer's role, that part seemed the weakest to me. But maybe a follow-up or articles will provide the additional information.
Interview with Tooze by his publisher about Wages of Destruction
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/Auth ... ml?sym=QUE
Does anyone know whether Tooze has published 'No room for miracles. Reassessing German industrial performance in World War II' yet?
There is a very positive review of the German edition available from the FAZ
Buchbesprechung Tooze
All the best
Andreas
Buchbesprechung Tooze
All the best
Andreas