Explain how WWII german economy was only sustainable through

>>2999266

Basically, Hitler wanted to re-arm Germany, a hugely expensive process, while at the same time maintaining a robust welfare state to ensure that he had a broad base of a support. This shit is expensive, and it was paid for secretly running a huge budget deficit which was hidden from most of the German government through fancy accounting tricks.

TLDR: Imagine somebody sealing money from his neighbors to try and pay off credit card debt.

>>2999266
Germany's economic miracle of the 1930's was possible mostly due to massive overspending on public works projects (Autobahn, Olympic Stadiums, etc) and military production for rearmament, and the country took on serious loans in order to cover the costs for rebuilding the country from the ground up.

normally that would be a case for quick rise and long crash once it came time to pay up, but Hitler's intention from the start was to conquer and reap the spoils of war to repay the debt, hence why they made such an effort to collect billfolds, jewelry, gold teeth, and other possessions from the dead in order to refill the coffers to plug back into the economy both for war and for their public works projects.

If Hitler did not go through with conquest and instead drove the economy into the ground through overspending, the economy would've bottomed out by the early 1940's.

>>2999285
How does invading Poland cure that?

>>2999293

Because you can confiscate assets from Poles.

>>2999289
Not OP, but who did they take loans from?

Here's a good place to start OP

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction

>>2999309
Mainly from designated money-lending institutions, industrial tycoons perhaps even the Ivans but that's a wild guess. They were also economically fucking over their allies.

>>2999308
Such as? To whom? Explain economics to me

1. IOUs
2. Oh shit inflation incoming
3. Mefo bills
4. Oh shit inflation incoming
5. Just kick that guy, put Göring instead and switch to war industry
6. Nice Jewish gold, let's sell it to the Swiss!
7. Oh look, golden reserves of Czechoslovakian central bank! Let's sell it to the Swiss!
8. -war-
9. Oh look, golden reserves of polish central bank! Let's sell it to the Swiss!
10. Oh look, golden reserves of Luxembourg central bank! Let's sell it to the Swiss!
11. Oh look, golden reserves of Dutch central bank! Let's sell it to the Swiss!
12. Oh look, golden reserves of Belgian central bank! Let's sell it to the Swiss!

>>2999333
>owe a bunch of money to bankers
>don't have to pay it back if said bankers are dead or you have a large military to tell them to fuck off

>>2999342
Psheks evacuated their gold.

>>2999266
That's not a picture of Germany.

>>2999309

They took loans from the German central bank, who could issue bonds for the German people to buy.

The problem with this is that central bank bonds have transparency requirements. After enough bonds have been sold, people get suspicious about where the government is going to find the money to pay back those bonds, and stop buying government bonds, which means no more lines of credit from the central bank.

The government circumvented this by issuing MEFO bills, which were bonds issued by a "private" company to fund rearmament. This meant that the bond market didn't know how much debt the government was really taking on.

However, when the bonds matured, the government would have no money to pay back any of them. This would make all German bonds junk and prevent the government from borrowing money in the future.

>>2999333

Well, for starters, quite a few Poles were kicked out of their homes which were then sold to Germans.

>>2999266

>german economy was only sustainable through constant war/expansion

No, that hypothesis does not make sense. The latent problem of the German economy at the eve of the war was hidden inflation, that was kept in check with price controls, rationing and the trick with the MEFO bills. The war greatly excaberated that, labor was diverted from the production of consumer goods to war material; millions of workers were drafted. Loot could not possibly make up for that, it just helped to maintain the war effort somewhat and to alleviate the decline in consumption. It was no solution to the problem of hidden inflation, however.

In 1948 the old Reichsmark was exchanged with the Deutsche Mark at a ration of 10:1. Such a reform would have been necessary even if Nazi Germany won the war.

Hitler's expansionism was not motivated by short-term economic problems resulting in his faulty economical policy; it's the other way around, his economical policy was designed to prepare for a war (which he wanted for ideological and long-term economic considerations), so the problems resulting in it did not really matter.

>>2999699
You make some good points, and have impressive digits, but don't discount the incredible instability and inefficiency of the nazi economy as explained by Adam tooze