The war economy and total war

Brief historical context of Germany and the Second World War

1938

Through Anschluss, Germany invaded Austria and sought the liberation of Germans in the Sudetenland region.

Despite the agreement in the Treaty of Munich, Adolf Hitler ordered the occupation of Czechoslovakia.

In April and May, the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway. By May, the Blitzkrieg was launched in Holland and Belgium.

On 13 May, Neville Chamberlain resigned as Prime Minister. By 11 June, Italy joined the Axis Powers, while France signed an armistice with Germany after 11 days.

1939

In March and April, Britain assured protection of Poland from Hitler's threats. By August, Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR. By 1 September, Hitler invaded Poland, and a declaration of war was announced by Britain and France.

1940

The Battle of Britain happened from 10 July to 31 October, 1940. It consisted of four phases and ended with a British victory.

1940

The Tripartite Pact was signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.

1941

Germany and Italy attacked Yugoslavia and Greece. 3 million soldiers and about 3,500 Nazi soldiers were sent to Russia through Operation Barbarossa, which formally ended their non-aggression pact.

1942

In the same month, the Germans were defeated by the Russians during the Battle of Stalingrad, followed by another defeat at the Battle of the Bulge in December.

1943

In November, two months after the surrender of Mussolini, the 'Big Three', composed of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, met at Tehran.

1944

On 6 June, the Allies launched an attack to recapture Normandy in western France. The Allied victory came to be known as D-Day. By August, Paris was liberated from the Germans.

In August, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August) and Nagasaki (9 August), Japan. By 14 August, Japan declared its unconditional surrender, which ended the Second World War.

1945

On 30 April, Hitler, with his wife Eva Braun, committed suicide in a bomb-proof shelter. On 2 May, the German forces surrendered.

Adolf Hitler's ambition of becoming the supreme ruler of Germany brought on one of the greatest wars in world history. His view of Aryan superiority ignited modern colonisation and divided the world for several years. The outbreak of World War II also changed the life of Germans in many ways.

Map showing the borders of Sudetenland

Events leading to the war

In the 1930s, Hitler directly contravened the Treaty of Versailles. He militarised the Rhineland and encountered no real opposition from foreign countries. On 12 September 1938, at a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg, Hitler announced his plans to attack Czechoslovakia.

Hitler demanded the cession of the Sudetenland. It was an area in northwestern Czechoslovakia where a large number of ethnic Germans lived. France and Britain then urged Czech president Edvard Benes to give up Sudetenland to Germany in order to avoid war.

On 29-30 September 1938, the British, French, German and Italian governments met at Munich, a Bavarian city in Germany. They reached an agreement regarding Hitler's demands in which they allowed German troops to occupy the Sudetenland. The Czechs saw this as a sign of betrayal and they coined this event the Mnichovský diktát (Munich Betrayal). This event signified the West's appeasement of Hitler. Moreover, a peace treaty between Britain and Germany was also signed.

(From left) Italian leader Benito Mussolini, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, a German interpreter, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain meeting in Munich, 29 September 1938.

On 29 September, Sudetenland was ceded to Germany, Chamberlain returned to Britain holding a piece of paper stating the peace treaty and promising Britain 'peace for our time'. Scholars suggest that the appeasement policy only made Czechoslovakia vulnerable to succeeding Nazi invasion and most importantly the Allies giving in to Hitler's demands. In March 1939, Germany occupied all Czech land, specifically Bohemia and Moravia, an area inhabited by an estimated two million Germans.

War economy

Unlike in the First World War, Germans reacted to WWII with resignation. Many still remembered what they lost in the Treaty of Versailles. On the other hand, many signed up to help in the war effort. As a result, they turned into a war economy. As soon as the Nazis came to power, Hitler's rearmament programme was used to alleviate unemployment as preparation for Germany's expansion (Lebensraum).

On 3 September 1939, WWII broke out when Britain and France reacted to the German invasion of Poland. In around a month, Poland was completely under Nazi control, while Hitler publicly made amends with the Allies. However, Hitler was secretly planning the invasion of France.

In the 1930s, military rearmament in Germany increased government spending faster than any nation in peacetime.

In preparation for war, Hermann Goering focussed on expanding heavy industries such as iron and steel in July 1937. The new industrial conglomerate known as the Reichswerke expanded its scope to Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria.

Come 1940, almost half of the German workforce was engaged in war production. Ironically, the number of female industrial workers also grew, which contradicted Nazi policies. Armament production was the leading job for both German men and women during the war. By the end of the war, about 7 million non-Aryans were working in Germany. Similar to what happened during WWI, large numbers of women entered the workforce in replacement of men. They worked mainly in ammunition factories.

In order to keep the war effort going, the Nazis employed forced labour by transporting prisoners of war to concentration camps in Germany and other parts of Eastern Europe. When the war ended, there were about 8 million slave labourers and refugees in Germany. In addition, about 11 million ethnic Germans were displaced from Eastern European countries.

Slave labour camps and sub camps were established in Germany and its occupied territories, particularly Poland.

Total war and Albert Speer

By late 1941, Nazi dominance began to weaken. The invasion of the USSR through Operation Barbarossa was a stalemate, while the United States formally joined the Allies.

As a result, Hitler appointed Albert Speer as the Minister of Armaments and War Production to ensure better planning, continuous production, and improved cooperation between the economy and the military.

Upon his appointment, Speer introduced rationalisation in industry. This included the following:

• Coordination among designers and manufacturers of munitions
• Usage of assembly lines for mass production
• Increased working hours and equitable pay
• Additional employed women and forced labourers
• Collection centres for donated clothes

Albert Speer and Adolf Hitler

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Forced labour

Following their rise to power, the Nazis established concentration camps in Germany. Arbeitslager or labour camps were run by the SS. Political dissidents and minorities were arrested and placed in camps for forced labour. When the war broke out, the need for labour increased sharply.

Map showing concentration and death camps in Germany and Poland

In 1941, the invasion of the USSR further heightened the demands of war. Most prisoners of war were deported to concentration camps for forced labour, usually in construction efforts. Prisoners were under harsh conditions; insufficient food, long working hours and lack of medicine. These conditions resulted in a high death rate in labour camps.

With the invasion of Poland in September 1939, six concentration camps were established in the Greater German Reich, including Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück. Death camps were then built at Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec and the most infamous, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Along with rearmament, conscription in the military was also reintroduced in 1935.

Between 1935 and 1945, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany became known as the Wehrmacht. In the years 1935 to 1939, more than a million were drafted, while 2.4 million were volunteers. Originally, the structure and values of the Wehrmacht were based on Prussian military. However, the need for massive numbers opened the army to lower class citizens and foreign volunteers. In 1941, the Wehrmacht also recruited soldiers from occupied territories. The Germanic populations from Norway and the Netherlands were recruited by the SS, while the non-Germans became part of the Wehrmacht.

Following the Battle of Stalingrad, recruitment by the German military as well as the SS increased. The need for more men meant lowering the standards such as health and age. Moreover, despite the initial ideological principle of Hitler regarding women, their conscription as Wehrmacht Helferinnen or Female Wehrmacht Helpers became inevitable.

Wehrmacht Helferinnen in occupied Paris, 1940

Structure of the Wehrmacht (1939-1945)

The Heer or the ground force of the German Army was largely composed of infantrymen on foot. Some used motor or horse. Despite the early successes in invading Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the initial stage of Operation Barbarossa, the German Army was generally undersupplied and outmanoeuvred compared to other industrial powers. The Panzer division was the most notorious unit of the German Army.

Reestablished in 1935 by Goering, the Luftwaffe was the air force of the Third Reich. The Luftwaffe played a vital role in the early Blitzkrieg campaigns in Poland and France. They were composed of tactical bombers and fighters who targeted supply lines and industrial areas. The Luftwaffe was also used to transport paratroopers.

After the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was prohibited from owning submarines. Meanwhile, the size of their Reichsmarine was also limited. Under the Wehrmacht, the German navy was renamed as the Kriegsmarine. Compared to the army and the Luftwaffe, the navy was the lowest priority in the rearmament programme. Its main contribution

to the German war effort was the deployment of U-boats, which became infamous in the early years of the war.

German fighter plane, Focke-Wulf Fw 190

German soldiers in Paris

German battleship

Following the declaration of war, Great Britain imposed a blockade on Germany.

As a result, Germany had little access to the world market and therefore supplies such as petroleum, coffee, sugar, cotton and chocolate. Initially, Germany relied on Romanian oil fields. Meanwhile, the majority of their ore supply came from Sweden. Prior to Operation Barbarossa, they also received raw materials and grains from the USSR.

On 27 August 1939, food rationing was introduced followed by clothing in October. As a result, the German diet was monotonous and composed of bread, potato and preserves. They rarely consumed meat due to a lack of imports from the US and food entitlements depended on the individual's war effort.

Image of a German boy eating ration food

Rationing began in 1939 yet chronic shortages of consumer goods was only felt in Germany in 1944. Conquered territories became Germany's source of raw materials and agricultural supplies.

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Every year, Germans on the homefront were given 66 coupons to buy new clothes. It was cut to 36 coupons in 1943.

Item	Men	Women	Children
Raincoat	16	15	11
Jacket	13	12	8
Trousers	8	8	6
Shorts	3	3	2
Shoes	7	5	3
Underpants	3	3	2
Socks	2	2	1

Table of clothing sold through coupons

As the war progressed, the rationing system allowed extra rations to men who worked in heavy industries, but all supplies for others, including civilians on the homefront and prisoners in camps, were reduced.

Other items such as coffee, fruits and vegetables were not rationed, rather completely unavailable due to the blockade.

German ration booklet

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On 14 February 1942, the British RAF Bomber Command employed a policy of area bombing, which targeted large German industrial cities.

Primary targets included Dortmund, Essen Duisburg, Düsseldorf and Cologne. Secondary targets included Braunschweig, Rostock, Bremen, Hanover, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Lübeck and Schweinfurt. The directive of the British Bomber Command was to destroy the morale of the civilian population, particularly the industrial workers. On the nights of 28 and 29 March 1942, the RAF bombed the Hanseatic port of Lübeck. On 30 May 1942, about 2,000 tons of explosive and incendiary bombs were dropped on Cologne.

Image of Frankfurt after the British area bombing.

For the next three years, about 61 German cities were attacked and 25 million people were affected; 3.6 million homes were destroyed; 300-400,000 Germans were killed in the raids; 800,000 were wounded; and 7.5 million were left homeless. German industrial production continued, however, until just before the war ended.

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Bombing of Dresden, 1945

Also known as the 'Florence of the Elbe', the historic city of Dresden, located in eastern Germany, was bombed by the Allied forces on 13 to 15 February 1945. The bombing became controversial because Dresden was neither significant in Germany's war production nor a huge industrial centre. Instead, the city became the shelter of fleeing refugees from the east. According to estimates, the bombing of Dresden resulted in the death of about 22,700 to 25,000 civilians.

Aerial shot of Dresden after the bombing, 1945

As a result of intensive British area bombing in 1942, thousands of refugees fled the cities. Moreover, when the Russians went through Poland, many moved westwards to escape the Reds.

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Racial policies; The Final Solution

The outbreak of World War II extended Jewish persecution by the Nazi regime. Not only in Germany; Jews living in territories under Nazi rule were also subjected to massive persecution. The Nazi persecution was divided into three phases.

PHASE 1

In autumn 1939, the invasion of Poland brought about 3 million Jews under the control of Hitler. Hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews were confined to camps and suffered terrible conditions which led to starvation and disease. In 1941, many believed that Hitler ordered the extermination of 11 million Jews in Europe, which later became known as the 'Final Solution'.

PHASE 2

In June 1941, a special SS unit known as Einsatzgruppen was created and was tasked to round up and execute Jews and Communist officials in the USSR. Victims were executed and buried in mass graves. Approximately 1.2 million Jews were killed by the Einsatzgruppen that year.

Map showing the Jewish Holocaust death toll as a percentage of the total pre-war Jewish population

In January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich led the transfer of all Jews under German rule to camps in Poland. About six camps were built in Poland which were specifically used for forced labour and murdering millions of Jews. Among the most notorious camps was Auschwitz-Birkenau, where about 2.5 million Jews were exterminated.

Image Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Sicherheitsdienst

Those who were able-bodied were forcibly worked to death, while the other groups were gassed with Zyklon B.

In this final phase, Jews were mass transferred to camps through trains and were separated into groups of those fit to work and those to be executed - normally women, children and the elderly.

Gas experiments were carried out in autumn 1941. From there, the German Camp Administration installed 4 permanent gas chambers at Birkenau. By 1943, the installations became operational, which included underground undressing rooms, gas chambers and a crematorium.

In addition to about six million Jews, scholars estimate that there were more than five million non-Jews who were murdered during Nazi rule. These included gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, black people, opposing clergymen, people with disabilities, prisoners of war, Slavs and political opponents. To justify the Holocaust, the Nazis believed that the Aryan race was superior to all other groups and it should remain pure. Between 1939 and 1941, about 50,000 people with intellectual disabilities were gassed with carbon monoxide under Hitler's T4 programme.

German children with blonde hair and blue eyes were raised by the Nazis as a pure Aryan race, while those who had dark hair were sent to concentration camps or subjected to experiments.

Image of the crematorium near gas chamber one

Image of a gas chamber at Auschwitz I

Auschwitz and the Final Solution

Being the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps, Auschwitz fell under Hitler's 'Final Solution' policy. Auschwitz I, located in southern Poland (also known as the Main Camp), was built by the Nazis to serve as a prisoner-of-war camp, specifically for USSR soldiers.

By early 1941, a synthetic rubber fuel company known as the Petro-Chemical Corporation was established. By the time the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, Auschwitz became a prisoner-of-war camp.

After the construction of Birkenau, its function changed to an extermination camp. By the autumn of 1941, gas experiments were carried out. Seeing its effectiveness, additional installations were placed. Immediately in 1942, existing buildings were converted into gas chambers as well, which began to operate the following year.

By the first half of 1942, Auschwitz was composed of 28 two-storey blocks. Each block had two large rooms upstairs and smaller rooms downstairs.

During the Second World War, Auschwitz was divided into several divisions. The main camp, Auschwitz I, housed about 20,000 political prisoners. The main entrance was inscribed with the phrase 'Arbeit Macht Frei' or 'Work Makes You Free'.

Image of Auschwitz Camp I in 1944

Brick and wooden barracks housed prisoners in Birkenau. Built on marshy ground, brick buildings lacked suitable insulation and sanitary facilities. Due to overcrowding, basements and lofts were also filled with prisoners at Auschwitz I.

Image of a wooden prisoner barracks in the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp

Image of a brick prisoner barracks in the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp

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At the Auschwitz complex alone, over 1.1 million prisoners were killed. In addition to gas chambers and a crematorium, prisoners were shot, hanged, or died of disease, famine and exhaustion. Some also committed suicide. Initially, prisoners were shot at pits near the camp. Between 1941 and 1943, many were executed in the courtyard of Block No. 11 in Auschwitz I. Many of them were Poles sentenced by the Gestapo summary court.

Historians believed that about 80% of the prisoners brought to Auschwitz were gassed just a few hours after their arrival. Some were selected to work, and those individuals likely only survived 3 months

Image of the Auschwitz entrance today

Entrance of Block 10 where medical experiments were held

Holocaust in Numbers

• 1.1 million Jewish children were killed
• Between 3,000 and 9,000 homosexual victims
• About 200,000 disabled and intellectually ill
• 40,000 camps, prisons and incarceration facilities within Germany and occupied countries
• 6 extermination camps in Poland, including Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.

Estimated number of Jews persecuted per German-occupied countries: