Borkin&Welsh-Germany's Master Plan(cartels&war)(1943)

This is Joseph Borkin's and Charles A. Welsh's rare and shocking book Germany's Master Plan - The Story of an Industrial Offensive (1943) which analyzes in detail how the Nazis took advantage of the budding globalized economy to restrict both their enemiesΓÇÖ strategic production and their access to critical raw materials which is essential to winning any war. The cartel agreements gave the German war economy access to technological know-how and raw materials vital to the successful prosecution of modern industrial warfare. Learning the lessons of defeat from World War I, the German military-industrial complex also sought to use technological innovation to make up for key areas of shortfall. Utilizing leading-edge technology to great advantage, companies such as I.G. Farben developed processes to synthesize oil, rubber, narcotics to treat casualties and other innovations that greatly aided the German wartime economy. Key to the German industrial offensive was the doctrine of the famous Prussian military philosopher Karl von Clausewitz - the first strategic thinker to formalize the concept of ΓÇ£Total War.ΓÇ¥ Borkin and Welsh discuss von ClausewitzΓÇÖs analysis of the relationship between war and peace, essential to understanding the concept of Total War. To von Clausewitz, peace was just a continuation of war by other means. This philosophy of war-in-peace became the keynote of Germany's political and economic intercourse with other nations. These tenets explain why, twice within a generation, we have entered war not only facing the might of German armies, but shackled by economic bondage to German industry. German-controlled cartels were at all times the servants of German interest. That their loyalty to Germany was undivided explains the uniformity of the agreements which they made. GermanyΓÇÖs industrial attack had as its cardinal purpose the reversal of blockade. Patents and secret ΓÇÿknow-howΓÇÖ were used to bar other countries' access to their own technology. By contrast, the German firmsΓÇÖ foreign cartel partners looked on these relationships as mere vehicles to maximize profits by eliminating competition and limiting production. To businessmen in the United States, England, and France, international cartels were an efficient means of guaranteeing monopoly. Industrialists outside of Germany thought in terms of low output, high prices, and maximum profits. They regarded divisions of both territory and fields of production as comfortable and easily policed methods by which they could free themselves from competition and create spheres of monopoly. As a result of this sharp disparity in the viewpoints of the German and Allied industrialists, the armies facing the Third ReichΓÇÖs soldiers on the field of battle were placed at a fundamental disadvantage. During the past twenty years, this cartel device has been the first line of German assault. Actualizing the von Clausewitz doctrine that ΓÇ£war is a continuation of policy by other means,ΓÇ¥ the Third Reich and its Axis allies used their military onslaught to drastically exacerbate the imbalance in strategic industrial production. As authors write: ΓÇ£The effect of Axis victories, in Europe and in the Pacific, gave them an advantage which we will spend many thousands of lives to overcome". Find out how cartels were and still are the major vehicles for war and how by cleverly blocking the free flow of resources they've managed to prolong the wars in order to maximize their profits at a giant cost of human lives. 345 pages. A must read for everyone.