ABSTRACT
Figure 7.1: National income and government xpenditure of the “Greater German Reich” 1940-1944a
Note: aIn RM thousand million (current prices). The figures denote the share of civil and military expenditure in total government expenditure (in per cent). Source: Willi A.Boelcke, “Kriegsfinanzierung im internationalen Vergleich”, in Friedrich Forstmeier and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds), Kriegswirtschaft und Ruestung 1939-1945 (Droste, Duesseldorf, 1977), p. 56
However, to generalise from cases like this would yield a distorted picture. It is certainly not correct to assume that reluctant industrialists had generally to be forced by state officials to
invest capital in countries belonging to the Grosswirtschaftsraum. The contrary is usually true. There were often converging interests between government and industry. It seems that by the end of the 1930s a substantial part of German industry had decided to support the National Socialist government in its objective to expand economically and politically into the east.
