The Wages of Destruction is an award-winning 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 Speer and rejects the idea that the German economy could have mobilised significantly more women into the war economy.
Famous quotes containing the words wages and/or destruction:
“There never has been a time in our history when work was so abundant or when wages were as high, whether measured by the currency in which they are paid or by their power to supply the necessaries and comforts of life.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)