Authors Borkin and Welsh analyze how the Nazis took advantage of the budding globalized economy to restrict both their enemies’ strategic production and their access to critical raw materials. The same cartel agreements gave the German war economy access to technological know-how and raw materials vital to the successful prosecution of modern industrial warfare. Learning the lessons of defeat from World War I, the German military-industrial complex also sought to use technological innovation to make up for key areas of shortfall. Utilizing leading-edge technology to great advantage, companies such as I.G. Farben developed processes to synthesize oil, rubber, narcotics to treat casualties and other innovations that greatly aided the German wartime economy.
Key to the German industrial offensive was the doctrine of the famous Prussian military philosopher Karl von Clausewitz — the first strategic thinker to formalize the concept of “Total War.” On pages 16 and 17, Borkin and Welsh discuss von Clausewitz’s analysis of the relationship between war and peace, essential to understanding the concept of Total War.
“Germany has long understood this strategy of total war. Karl von Clausewitz, the father of modern German militarism, set out its major premise when he said, ‘War is no independent thing; the main lineaments of all great strategic plans are of a political nature, the more so the more they include the totality of War and the State.’ To von Clausewitz, peace was a continuation of war by other means. In effect, he said to Germany, ‘Disarm your enemy in peace by diplomacy and trade if you would conquer him more readily on the field of battle.’ This philosophy of war-in-peace became the keynote of Germany’s political and economic intercourse with other nations. These tenets explain why, twice within a generation, we have entered war not only facing the might of German armies, but shackled by economic bondage to German industry. German-controlled cartels were at all times the servants of German interest. That their loyalty to Germany was undivided explains the uniformity of the agreements which they made. Germany’s industrial attack had as its cardinal purpose the reversal of blockade. Patents and secret ‘know-how’ were used to bar our access to our own technology.” (more...)
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