Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition, by Jack Snyder.
In the Nazi period, the alleged need for autarky provides the most plausible explanation for German aggression at the level of the international system. In this account, the vulnerability of Weimar Germany to the cycles of the world economy demonstrated the necessity for Germany to gain political control over its own markets and sources of raw materials. Nazi Germany was able to pull out of the depression through rearmament, public works, and other largely internal efforts, but by the late 1930s this hothouse economy was at an impasse. To balance its payments, Germany would either have to 1) reduce arms spending, which would risk turning off the 'military Keynesian' engine of recovery; 2) devalue the mark, which would reduce living standards and raise the specter of inflation; 3) become autarkic, which would require conquering the resources the economy needed.
There are three problems with the argument that necessity dictated the choice of the third option, autarky and expansion. First, economic recovery proceeded remilitarisation, so we must assume that cutting military spending would not necessarily have ruined the German economy. Second, there is evidence that Hitler sought autarky as a preparation for war, not war as the means to achieve autarky. The economic impasse of the late 1930s was almost entirely caused by the attempt to have 'guns and butter' at the same time. The hard currency crisis, for example, was due to the attempt to maintain civilian imports at previous levels while vastly accelerating imports to fuel expanded military production. The downturn of American demand for German exports, associated with renewed depression in 1938, exacerbated this contradiction but was not its root cause.
Third, key economic interests and experts opposed the policy of excessive military production, autarky, and aggression. Hjalmar Schacht, overseer of the economy, wanted to pursue a strategy based on high levels of foreign trade. In Eastern Europe he thought his trade agreement had already acquired much of the hinterland that the German economy needed, without conquests and colonial settlement. Schacht, like the Ruhr coal and steel interests, expected to buffer Germany from fickle international market forces not by territorial conquest, but through international cartel agreements, which were proceeding successfully. In sum, the economic crisis was not a cause of Hitlers aggression, but rather a consequence of his policy of 'strip mining' the German economy to prepare for war.
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