World Wars of the Twentieth Century 349
wholly reconciled to market methods of mobilizing resources or reg
ulating individual rewards for economic activity. High technological
skills superimposed upon still powerful residues from a “feudal” past
gave both countries a particular advantage in World War II. Hardi
hood and unquestioning obedience to a command hierarchy when
combined with well-designed weapons and a more or less adequate
supply system made the Japanese and Russians into very effective
soldiers, and allowed the Japanese and Soviet governments noticeably
to surpass the military effectiveness attained by either country in
World War I.
When it came to coping with the depression of the 1930s in Ger
many, western Europe, and America, World War I patterns of eco
nomic mobilization were much more evident than they were in Japan’s
case. The Nazi regime in Germany (1933–45) harked back deliber
ately to wartime propaganda methods for mobilizing sentiment against
internal and external foes. As rearmament got seriously underway,
after 1935, the role of arms manufacture in the German economy
grew in importance, though it did not approach World War I levels
until 1942–45. Instead, Hitler reaffirmed the ideal of 1866 and 1870.
He aimed to prepare so well that victory would be assured in a short
campaign without having to harness current production to a desperate
war of attrition as had happened in 1914–18. Officers in charge of
armaments supply distrusted this strategy, arguing that preparation for
a war of attrition was the only realistic policy. But many German
officers shared Hitler’s doubts about the willingness of civilians to
submit to the sort of prolonged deprivation that such a war was sure to
bring; and none of them effectively opposed Hitler’s combination of
bluff and preparation for Blitzkrieg.^75
In the United States, the elections of 1932 brought Woodrow Wil
son’s party back to power. The New Deal, proclaimed by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, like the Nazi regime in Germany, fell
back on World War I precedents in trying to do something about the
depression which had put some thirteen million persons out of work
since 1929.^76 Like Hitler, in his first years of power FDR attempted to
- General Georg Thomas, chief of the Economic Staff of the Ministry of War,
1934–42 (rechristened Defense Economics and Armaments Office in 1939), was the
principal advocate of what he called “armament in depth” as against Hitler’s “armament
in breadth.” Cf. B. A. Carroll, Design for Total War: Anns and Economics in the Third
Reich (The Hague, 1968), pp. 38–53 and passim. For a penetrating study of the policy of
the German army leaders see Michael Geyer, Rüstung oder Sicherheit: Die Reichsivehr in
der Krise der Machtpolitik, 1924–1936 (Wiesbaden, 1980), pp. 489–505 and passim.
- Ellis W. Hawley, “The New Deal and Business,” in John Braeman et al., eds., The
New Deal: The National Level (Columbus, Ohio, 1975), p. 61; William E. Leuchtenburg,
