Wages of Destruction

This chilling, fascinating new book is the first fully to get to grips with how Hitler's Nazi empire REALLY functioned. There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics - it was Hitler's obsession and the reason the Nazis came to power in the first place. The Second World War was fought, in Hitler's view, to create a European Empire strong enough to take on the United States - a last chance for Europe to dig itself in before being swept away by the USA's ever greater power. But, as THE WAGES OF DESTRUCTION makes clear, Hitler was never remotely strong enough to beat either Britain or the Soviet Union - and never even had a serious plan as to how he might defeat the USA. It took years of fighting and the deaths of millions of people to destroy the Third Reich, but effectively World War II in Europe was fought in pursuit of a fantasy: the years in which Western Europe could settle the world's fate were, by 1939, long past. This is a major book by a major author and will provoke an enormous amount of controversy and debate.

Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy provides a groundbreaking new account of how Hitler established himself in power, mobilized for war - and led his country to annihilation.

Was the tragedy of the Second World War determined by Nazi Germany's terrifying power, or by its fatal weakness?

This gripping and universally-acclaimed new history tells the real story of the cost of Hitler's plans for world domination - and will overturn everything you thought you knew about the Third Reich.

'A tour de force' Niall Ferguson

'Masterful ... smashes a gallery of preconceptions' The Times

'This book will change the way we look at Nazi history ... nothing less than a masterpiece. Rejoice, rejoice, for a great historian is born' Sunday Telegraph

'A remarkable and gripping revision of the history of Nazi Germany' New Statesman Books of the Year

'A powerful and provocative reassessment of the whole story' Richard Overy

Auteur

Adam Tooze