Fueling the War to Come

This chapter sketches out the progress of the Four-Year Plan of 1936 to achieve economic self-sufficiency. It stresses that Germany never sought self-sufficiency as an end in and of itself—the aim was always to provide the German armed forces and war economy with sufficient resources to wage a war of conquest. By 1939, progress toward even this narrower objective was faltering due to shortages of steel, coal, capital, and labor. The Third Reich’s bellicosity after 1937 also limited the amount of time Germany would have to remedy its economic vulnerabilities before war began. Following the Sudeten crisis of 1938, the regime moved to rebuild relations with Romania to guarantee at least one reliable source of imports in wartime. By the time war broke out the following year, German officials were cautiously optimistic that Romanian exports, along with synthetics and existing stockpiles, were sufficient to meet Germany’s immediate wartime requirements.