This excellent book is fundamental to understanding both the nature of the Second World War and its consequences. Published over 25 years ago, it is still the basic book on this topic and a goldmine of information about WWII. In a series of concise and well written chapters, Milward covers a series of crucial topics including the basic strategic/economic approaches of the major (and some minor) combatants, the economic consequences of the war, the ways in which the combatants adapted to the prolonged nature of the war, the effects of the war on agriculture and labor, the organization of food supplies, the economics of occupation, attempts at economic warfare, and the efforts to establish a post-war economic order. A large number of interesting observations emerge. For example, at the outset of the war, each combatant's economic policy is shown to be the product of the overall strategic concept of the war (or in the case of the USA and the Soviet Union, lack of a strategic concept of the war). The British envisioned a longterm war, chose to organize a total war economy, and invested in research and development that would be very fruitful despite limited industrial capacity. For the Germans, on the other hand, Blitzkrieg was more than a tactic. It implies a war economy based on short, successful wars and deferring total mobilization for war. The Japanese hoped to make the war pay with economic support from the newly established conquests in Southeast Asia and China. As the war progessed, all the major combatants had to mobilize for total war, to greater and lesser degrees of success. The Allied economies were the most successful, partly because of the enormous capability of the USA but also because the polticial structure of the democracies proved more capable of developing the administrative apparatus for total mobilization. Milward is very good on how the experience of warfare altered the economies of combatants and the international economy as a whole. Milward shows also how the experience of economic mobilization abetted the organization and powers of central governments in the democracies and fueled the expectations that a successful international economic order based on active government control could be developed. This came to be partially true. As is often the case in Western history, warfare has been the mechanism by which centralization and expanded government power has occurred. Implicit in Milward's discussions are that this is true for domestic politics. The success of central governments and central control of the economy in WWII surely had a great deal to do with the emergence of socialist governments in Britain and more activist Federal governments (of any party) after the war.

Milward's higly interesting and eminently readable study of the German economy during the Second World War attempts to account for the remarkable disparity in armaments production quantities witnessed between the early and latter years of the war. Despite the fact that the Allies were enaged in massive bombing campaigns against Germany from 1942 onward, Germany's overall armaments production indices actually rose tremendously in the final three years of the war. Milward attempts to account for this contradiction by positing that the German's were not on 'total war' footing until 1942, an idea intially founded by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey's research in 1946. Milward additionally traces the history of the German 'rationalization' drive undertaken by Albert Speer beginning in 1942. In this way the high armaments production figures of 1942-1945 are explained in terms of a belated commitment to 'total war' in conjunction disorganized mangement of the arms economy from 1939-1942. Although many of Milward's conclusions have since been challenged by historians such as Richard Overy, the 'German Economy at War' was a groundbreaking book, not to be overlooked by any serious scholar of the Third Reich.