Table Of ContentSTUDIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
XVII
DESIGN
FOR TOTAL WAR
ARMS AND ECONOMICS
IN THE
THIRD REICH
by
BERENICE A. CARROLL
University of Illinois
1968
MOUTON
THE HAGUE • PARIS
© Copyright 1968 in The Netherlands.
Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague.
No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print,
photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 68-15527
Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague.
In Memory of my Father
Morris B. Jacobs
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to express her deep gratitude to the late Professor
Sinclair W. Armstrong, without whose encouragement this book
might never have been begun, and to Professor Donald G. Rohr,
who saw it through the last stages of its preparation as a doctoral
dissertation in 1959. Since that time, however, it has undergone such
great changes both of form and of content that Professor Rohr must
be absolved of any responsibility for its present defects; the revision
has benefited, however, from his suggestions. To Gerhard L. Wein-
berg the author owes special thanks for introducing her to the mate-
rials on which the book is mainly based, for giving generously of his
enormous fund of knowledge of National Socialist Germany, and for
personal encouragement. Fritz T. Epstein and Oron J. Hale have also
given valuable advice and information. To Dagmar H. Perman, the
author gives thanks not only for aid and counsel, but for enlivening
a grim field of study with moments of buoyancy.
Of the many persons whose influence has helped to shape this
book either in thought or in method, the author wishes to mention
and thank especially Jack Hexter and Donald H. Fleming. Many
friends and colleagues have also contributed to the formulation and
broadening of the author's ideas on the processes of war and peace,
through continuing debate on both.
Thanks are due to many libraries, librarians and archivists, among
whom the author would like to mention especially: the staff of the
World War II Records Division of the National Archives, in Alexan-
dria, Virginia; John Taylor of the National Archives in Washington,
D.C.; the University of Illinois Library, in particular Billie R. Bozone;
and Arthur Schweitzer and the University of Indiana Library, for the
generous loan of microfilm. The author is also grateful for advice and
access to materials and finding aids at the Institut für Völkerrecht
in Göttingen, the Institut für Weltwirtschaft in Kiel, the Institut für
8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Zeitgeschichte in Munich, the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, the Deut-
sche Industrieinstitut in Cologne, and other libraries in the United
States and abroad.
The research was begun under a Fulbright scholarship for study
in Germany, and later supported in part by a traveling fellowship
from Brown University; a small but very helpful grant for the pur-
chase of microfilm was provided by Rutgers University. Leisure for
reflection, revision and expansion of the work was provided by my
husband, Robert W. Carroll, whose tolerance and sacrifices have both
been great, and who has also contributed to the progress of the work,
both directly and indirectly. To him the author wishes to express her
manifold gratitude and admiration. To her parents, Margaret and
Morris B. Jacobs, she owes thanks beyond words for many years of
guidance, encouragement and support.
PREFACE
"Total war" is not a single, or "unit" idea, but an accumulation of
separable propositions, sometimes mutually contradictory, which have
come to be associated under one term. The history of this composite
of ideas remains unwritten. Its evolution, from the French Revolution
through World War I, is sketched in Chapter I, in which we call
attention to the little-known work of Alphonse Séché, Les Guerres
cl?Enfer (1915), as the fullest early appreciation of the implications of
"total mobilization of national resources" for war. This notion is one
of the two most prominent components of the idea of "total war"; the
other, of course, is "total destruction of the enemy" (combatants and
non-combatants alike). These two components, as will be seen in this
book, can be mutually incompatible. In any case, they are capable of
interpretation in several ways, or of reduction to more limited terms.
"Total mobilization of national resources", for example, embodies
both the "organization of enthusiasm" and "economic mobilization
for war". These too can compete with as well as reinforce each other
(consider the case of radio vs. radar tubes). In practice, these varying
components and interpretations of the idea of total war called forth
varying blueprints for its realization, what we may call "designs for
total war".
In the body of this book, we are concerned with the content and
fate of one such design for total war, that fixed upon by a group of
German officers, led by General Georg Thomas, who sought to insure
that Germany's economic mobilization for World War II would be
"total". In pursuing this goal, Thomas found his path obstructed not
only by opponents of total war itself, but by those of its proponents
who were dedicated to differing or opposing "designs". Among the
latter, the most prominent examples were Albert Speer and Adolf
Hitler himself. Speer's differences with Thomas were much smaller,
in principle, than has been claimed; in practice they were sufficient
