The Balance Sheet: The Costs and the Gains of the Bombing Campaign

Critics of the bomber offensive frequently argue that the material and human cost of the campaign far overshadowed the gains, and that the resources dedicated to it could have been more effectively utilized elsewhere. They have argued that the combat manpower could have been better used in the other fighting services, especially the army, and industry could have been used to produce more weapons for these fighting services. However, proponents of this line of thought assume that the weight of effort expended on the bombing campaign was inordinately high. Richard Overy maintains that it was actually rather modest. “Measured against the totals for the entire war effort (production and fighting), bombing absorbed 7 percent, rising to 12 percent in 1944–45. Since at least a proportion of bomber production went to other theatres of war, the aggregate figures for the direct bombing of Germany were certainly smaller than this. Seven percent of Britain’s war effort can hardly be regarded as an unreasonable allocation of resources.” Further, although some significant infantry shortages were experienced in 1944, they never reached an extremely critical overall level and were eventually rectified. With respect to materiel, none of the services was conspicuously wanting for anything by 1943, and the British effort was thereafter bolstered by substantial North American war production

The Nazi Fiscal Cliff: Unsustainable Financial Practices before World War II

The Nazis inherited a weak economy, withered by the Great Depression and periods of hyperinflation, when they took power in 1933. Over the next six years, primarily through a military buildup, the Nazi economy grew like none other in the world. This paper traces the methods the Nazis used to finance this economic rebound. Through an analysis of secret government documents, Nuremburg witness statements, and the latest scholarly research, this paper posits that the methods used to finance the economy were unsustainable. Further, it finds that by September 1939, the economy was in a state of dangerous disarray

The Shadow of the Habsburgs: Memory and National Identity in Austrian Politics and Education, 1918-1955

This dissertation examines how the people of Austria portrayed their past as part of the centuries-old, multinational Habsburg Monarchy in order to conduct a public debate about what it meant to be an "Austrian" during a tumultuous era in Europe's history. As its main sources, It draws upon the public writings of Austrian politicians and intellectuals, as well as on educational laws, curricula and history textbooks used by the different Austrian governments of the era in order to describe how Austrian leaders portrayed Austria's past in an attempt to define its national future, even as Austrian schools tried to disseminate those national and historical ideals to the next generation of Austrian citizens in a practical sense. The first section describes how the leaders of the Austrian First Republic saw Austria's newfound independence after 1918 as a clean break with its Habsburg past, and consequently pursued a union with Germany which was frustrated by the political interests of the victors of World War I. The second section details the rise of an "Austro-fascist" dictatorship in Austria during the mid-1930s which promoted an Austrian patriotism grounded in a positive portrayal of the Habsburg Monarchy in order to remain independent from Nazi Germany. The third section examines Austria's forcible incorporation into the Nazi German state, and the effort by the Third Reich to completely eradicate the existence of a distinctive Austrian identity by casting the Habsburg era in a negative light. The final section describes the rebirth of an independent Austrian state at the insistence of the Allied powers after World War II, and the manner in which the leaders of the Austrian Second Republic used memories of the Habsburg Past in order to portray Austrians as the victims of foreign German aggression who bore no responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich. This study ultimately shows that national identity was variable in post-Habsburg Austria, and that Austrian leaders and educators were able to construct narratives regarding their past which at times argued both for and against Austrian Germanness in response to the changing demands of the European balance of power

Land Value Taxation in Germany: Theoretical and Historical Issues

Land value taxation in Germany has a long history pre-dating and post-dating Henry George''s own influence. Some of the ideas Henry George stood for had already taken root in German practice before him, and when his books began to appear almost simultaneously with their American editions in Germany, a German intellectual and political movement began to emerge rallying around the issue of land reform. In this essay, first the intellectual roots of Georgist ideas in German literature are being retraced. Secondly, the practice of land value taxation, or more precisely land added value taxation is being described. The core of Henry George''s ideas, however, is embodied not in the legislation on land added value taxation, but rather appended to the income tax code. This is the topic of the third section. Since the interplay between German income tax legislation and investment decisions is hard to grasp for the uninitiated from a purely theoretical discussion, an example is being analyzed in the fourth section in order to illustrate how this AGeorgist@ system of taxation operates in practice.Economics ;

Germanification, cultural mission, holocaust: theatre in Łódź during World War II

No abstract available

Understanding West German Economic Growth in the 1950s

We evaluate explanations for why Germany grew so quickly in the 1950s. The recent litera- ture has emphasized convergence, structural change and institutional shake-up while minimiz- ing the importance of the postwar shock. We show that this shock and its consequences were more important than neoclassical convergence and structural change in explaining the rapid growth of the West German economy in the 1950s. We find little support for the hypothesis of institutional shakeup. This suggests a different interpretation of post-World War II German economic growth than features in much of the literature.economic growth, productivity, Germany