Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Hawke's avatar

I like the way you write and will continue to read your work with great interest.

However I found this article disappointing as I was expecting an actual economic analysis and details of why exactly Hitler's economy didn't work. You have instead however made some general statements and then filled the rest up with (creatively brilliant) word salad and a good deal of seemingly personal rancor towards Hitler as a politician and war leader in addition to the supposed thesis. Highly entertaining but I feel the title is a bit misleading, it's more an opinion piece on why Hitler failed as a leader in general.

As a side note, you may want to read more about how utterly petrified Germany (and Europe in general) were of Soviet Bolshevism and the fear it would spread. The Nazi's quite literally thought they were waging a war in defense of Europe and saving everyone. Absurd ot us now perhaps, but it's what they believed in the context of their time. And the weight that would give to the economic choices they made. In reply to your point about trade VS war, you may want to look into the world wide Jewish boycott of German goods starting in the 30's when they declared "total war" on Germany as a state. Interesting little tid bits there.

Expand full comment
Daniel Melgar's avatar

I think your thesis is spot on. I recently saw it called “The Capitalist Peace”.

The grotesque idea that sending men off to fight is somehow heroic is just another endemic aspect of altruism—sacrificing for the state; as opposed to fighting for one’s own values like individual liberty.

Having said that, I think your thesis shouldn’t be viewed as some utopian notion that armies should be dismantled. Game theory provides ample evidence that the tit for tat strategy demands that parties must be able to mirror their opponent’s move—either cooperation or defection.

“Of all the Western democracies, only two have no choice but to depend on their own military forces for their survival— the United States and Israel. The rest have for more than half a century had the luxury of depending on American military forces in general and the American nuclear deterrent in particular.”—Thomas Sowell

Expand full comment
12 more comments...

No posts