Economics

Abstract

In view of the importance given to economics in the analysis of contemporary politics and international relations, it is remarkable how small a place it occupies in the literature on the origins of the Second World War. For every hundred books on, say, ideology, military plans and policies, intelligence, diplomacy and the personalities involved, scarcely one is published that directly confronts the economic issues. Of the many reasons for this situation, two may be singled out for mention. In the first place, the liberal conventions of historical scholarship place supreme value upon evidence, which in the case of international or diplomatic history means firsthand evidence of influence upon the decision-makers, whereas by and large economic factors exert only an indirect influence upon the making of foreign and defence policies. Second, and closely related to the first, is the negative influence of crude Marxist explanations of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, which began to appear in print even before he took office.¹ Based on the assumption that social classes behave precisely in accordance with their economic interests and that under capitalism big business exercises a hegemonic influence over the political system, Marxists presented Hitler as merely the cypher of German economic élites. The manifest inaccuracy of this interpretation served to underline objections to determinist, and particularly economically determinist, approaches to history. Yet to set aside economic factors is to overlook a number of extremely important, arguably crucial, aspects of the pre-war period. For, as the following chapter briefly indicates, the uniquely prolonged and severe economic crisis between the wars profoundly affected all the Great Powers, albeit in different ways, influencing their choice of leaders and even regimes, their levels of arms expenditure, their mutual relations, and ultimately their willingness or reluctance to contemplate war.²