In this groundbreaking new history, Adam Tooze provides the clearest picture to date of the Nazi war machine and its undoing. There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics—it was Hitler's obsession and the reason the Nazis came to power in the first place. The Second World War was fought, in Hitler's view, to create a European empire strong enough to take on the United States. But as The Wages of Destruction makes clear, Hitler's armies were never powerful enough to beat either Britain or the Soviet Union—and Hitler never had a serious plan as to how he might defeat the United States. The Wages of Destruction is an eye-opening and controversial account that will challenge conventional interpretations of the period and will find an enthusiastic readership among fans of Ian Kershaw and Richard Evans. BACKCOVER: Advance praise for The Wages of Destruction:
“One of the most important and original books to be published about the Third Reich in the past twenty years. A tour de force.”
—Niall Ferguson, author of Colossus

“Unputdownable epic history . . . Transforms not only our reading of Hitler's sordid regime, but the history of the twentieth century itself. Brilliantly written, its original scholarship is telling and lightly borne on every page.”
—John Cornwell, author of Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII