| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The origins of this article lie in a new study of the Nazi German economy by Adam Tooze, a fragment of which argues that the need to overcome the technological deficit built by the Western Allies in antisubmarine warfare from 1939 triggered a major shift in U-boat design and production after 1943.1 Tooze points out that an emphasis on technological solutions to strategic and operational problems had by that point become a hallmark of the Nazis', and especially Hitler's, thinking. (Other examples were the Tiger and Panther tanks at Kursk, both of which types proved dysfunctional as platforms, and neither of which proved decisive to the outcome.) So interpreted, the Nazi penchant for imputing to innovation the means to solve a whole class of operational and strategic problems seems to resemble "technological fixes" in other fields of innovation.2 In so arguing Tooze writes off the findings of Richard Overy, who points to the failure of the regime to develop positive relationships between industry and the war effort as reflecting a "peculiar irrationality of the 'Nazi social system.'" Tooze highlights the research of Ralf Schabel on jet-engine development in the aircraft industry, research asserting that exaggerated technological expectations resulted from Germany's hopeless strategic dilemma and that the systems themselves, while quite promising, were rushed into mass production and combat without adequate testing or development. Interestingly, he then characterizes Admiral Karl Dönitz's decision to embrace the Type XXI submarine in 1943, under the technocratic direction of Albert Speer's ministry, as reflecting both the increasing unreality of German armaments propaganda and a progressively more authoritarian cast of the German war economy.
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