Hitler Economics

I wrote the other day about how Genghis Khan didn't understand the economics of subject peoples. Turns out he has some distinguished compoany:

Alfred Rosenberg, later hanged at Nuremberg as one of Nazism's prinncipal war criminals, ... saw that the German empire needed goodwill from at least some of its subject peoples, so that they might function economically in the Reich's interests. ... 7.5 million men were aabsent at the front, so to sustain Germany's economy, replacement labor was needed for mines and factories. Hitler's captives and subject races provided the only plausible manpower pool. Yet Himmler's SS, with robust assistance from the Wehrmacht, was killing millions of prospective slaves. ... Having no interest in or understanding of the complex relationships of international trade, [Hitler] sought merely to loot the occupied nations for the advantage of Germany. He was oblivious of the consequences not only for subject populations, but ultimately for the entire continent. Germany continued to ship food from Greece, heedless of the fact that the Greeks themselves were dependent on imports to live. ...

That's Max Hastings, reviewing a couple of promising new books on the internal operation of the Nazi Empire ("The Most Evil Emperor,"New York Review of Books, October 23, 2008, 46-9, 47-8). One big difference between Genghis Khan and Hitler: Genghis showed a spectacular capacity to learn from his mistakes. His empire lasted--well, not for a thousand years but for many generations, and changed the face of the continent forever. Hitler's--well, you know about that.