ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the war Adolf Hitler told his adulatory audience at the Sports Palace in Berlin: ‘We National Socialists have our origins in war, our philosophy results from the experience of war and it will prove itself, if necessary, in war.’ According to a popular theory there is a clear distinction between Blitzkrieg and ‘total war’. General Georg Thomas, as head of the economics division of the Ministry of War, hoped to centralise the planning of the war economy under his direction, but he was unable to control the various officials who had been given special powers over the war economy. In January 1942 it was ordered that no further attention should be paid to post-war planning so that every effort could be concentrated on increasing war production. The war economy might be a necessary evil, but the civilian economy should continue to run according to National Socialist principles.
