ABSTRACT
After 1939, the National Socialists sought to establish a Grossraumwirtschaft, that is, a German-dominated economic bloc on the European level, including forestry and wood processing industries. This chapter addresses the trans-ideological nature of planning schemes and related instruments in the forestry and timber industries of the 1930s and early 1940s. It compares the interwar efforts of international organizations to establish the means and methods for governing Europe's forests and the processing and distribution of their main product—timber—on the international and continental levels, to those of the war years. The chapter contributes to recent research on the National Socialists' involvement in and influence on international networks and organizations. It highlights the activities of the international timber organization, the Comité International du Bois (CIB). The outlined efforts of the Centre International de Sylviculture (CIS) to establish a permanent "European Wood Balance" followed the same comprehensive approach that Egon Glesinger had envisioned in 1933 as the CIB's "maximum program".
