ABSTRACT
Ostensibly, Germany should have been well-prepared for war in 1939, with the introduction of rearmament and conscription in 1935 and a Four Year Plan for the economy in 1936, and with plans for mobilizing civilians to prepare for a ‘total war’ in which the nation's entire resources would be concentrated on achieving victory as quickly as possible. Hitler was haunted by both memories of and myths about the First World War, when, he and many others believed, a strong and successful German army had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by Jews and socialists (and perhaps also women) at home, in a protracted conflict. In his war to overturn the remnants of the hated Versailles Treaty and give Germany hegemony in central and eastern Europe, the home front would be geared, as never before, to war production. A successful Germany would dictate the pace of aggression, and would therefore be able to avoid the mistakes of 1914–18, when a long two-front war with unsatisfactory allies and against a coalition of enemies had sapped Germany's strength on the home front.
