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  • The Economics of World War I
  • Peter Temin
The Economics of World War I. Edited by Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005) 345 pp. $80.00

World War I marked the end of an era. Three great empires collapsed in the East: the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, and the Ottoman. The spirit of conflict never died in the West, leading to World War II after twenty years. This book surveys the economics of the war. It is the sequel to a similar book on the later conflict, and it looks forward to World War II for parallels rather than looking back to see the end of an era.1

A great strength of this survey is that it extends from the usual suspects in Western Europe and America to the collapsing empires in the East, offering essays on the war economy in Austria-Hungary (by Max-Stephan Sculze), the Ottoman Empire (by Sevket Pamuk), and Russia (by Peter Gatrell). These essays collectively offer a portrait of agrarian societies caught up in industrial conflict. It is not a pretty picture; poor military efforts produced great costs to domestic society. The pretension of these countries' leaders that they could play in the league of the industrial countries may well have led to their demise.

All nine of the country essays report the progress of gdp, trade, government finances, and (where observable) income distribution, during the war. They also attempt to measure the cost of the war for each country as well as possible. The heavy hand of the editors is evident in the introductory paragraphs of each essay that list the topics considered. The essays on Germany (by Albrecht Ritschl) argues that Germans started during the war to shift their imperialist aims from extra-European colonies to Eastern Europe. The essay on the United States (by Hugh Rockoff) explores the institutional innovations of the war, also examining a legacy of the war more complex than its cost.

The editors make three synthetic points in their introduction. First, the Germany hope for a quick victory was clearly a political aim as much as a military one; the defeated countries had to collapse or at least acknowledge defeat for it to be fulfilled. Despite Germany's military prowess, the political conditions did not suffice. Harrison made the same claim in the survey of World War II. Perhaps all wars are started in the hope of quick victory.

Second, economics mattered for the outcome of the war of attrition that followed the absence of a quick victory. The Allies in both world [End Page 595] wars had the greater resources, and they eventually won. (The advantage appears to have come chiefly because of the participation of the United States, although the data do not make this reasoning easy to discern.) A sense of economic inevitability haunts this conclusion, although wars are never so predictable. As Overy has demonstrated for World War II, economics is only one aspect of a complex historical process, albeit an important one.2

Third, whereas aggregate resources mattered for victory, resources per capita mattered for military mobilization. Poor countries were largely agrarian, and they had trouble recruiting or drafting soldiers. Stripping the countryside led to urban famines and discontent. Leaning on the peasantry led to resistance and food consumed on the farm instead of being sent to the cities. This sort of economic contradiction produced political chaos in the East.

The passions aroused in the West by World War I produced depression, fascism, and the Holocaust. The antagonisms finally were laid to rest in 1945. The chaos produced in the East generated brutal repression for many people; we are still (or again) engaged in dealing with the shards of the old empires today. This book records one important aspect of the conflict that unsettled the Victorian Age. The editors' introduction is a valuable summary, and the country chapters provide consistent data for comparisons and analysis.

Peter Temin
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Footnotes

1. Mark Harrison (ed.), The Economics of World War II (New York, 1998).

2. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York, 1996).

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