(8 of 8)
The Nazis' economic invention has organized Germany from top to bottom for war. The "unemployed" have been at work for years on strategic roads, airports and military structures. The farmer has been directed to produce cheap bulk crops for the masses instead of money-making high-quality vegetables and fats, and priority in raw materials has gone either to the armament makers or to the export manufacturers who bring in needed foreign exchange which can be turned into imported materials of military value. But the Nazi effort is a frenzied effort to build on an insufficient natural base, and indications are that, like German efforts in the past, it is probably doomed to splinter on the harsh facts of Central European geography.
It is possible that, with belt-tightening and abandonment of the 25% of German effort now going into armament and public works, Germany could sell its services to a mollified world and live at home. Given a decade of peace, the ability of the Nazis to remain in power rests partly on psychological factors (how many economic sacrifices the German people will bear) and partly on economic factors (how high a standard of living Nazi economics can give). Continued "bloodless" victories over the races of Eastern Europe will increase Germany's economic self-sufficiency, but at the cost of new political difficulties of a sort that led to the disintegration of old Austria-Hungary.
Moreover, the need for industrial and military man power is draining the German farms of needed labor, and hopelessness is spreading in the rural villages. In the old Reich alone the number of male farm workers has fallen by 800,000—which adds to the burden of farm women and children. Peasants have traditionally been the backbone of the State in Central Europe; and if the peasantry becomes disaffected, a war-making Nazi Government might find itself defeated on the field of morale. The chances of Germany's winning a long war are even slimmer in view of one further factor which lies outside of Germany or Germany's economy: the German lines of communication are even more vulnerable than Britain's. The British Isles front for many coastal miles on the open ocean, while Germany's ports are all on semi-landlocked seas. During the World War the British effectively blockaded Germany and starved her white simply by keeping the fleet in readiness in the home waters.
The moral: If she fights soon, Germany, unless she can team up with Russia, must win by a Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war," or she will lose, as in 1914-18, to the silent pressure of human and industrial starvation and the British fleet. If she chooses to postpone war, she must keep her people imbued with the belief that continued belt-tightening now will mean a stronger industrial machine—and a reversion to welfare economy—later on.