Economists at War : How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars

Abstract

Economists at War tells the story of a group of remarkable economists, and how they used their skills to help their countries fight their battles during the turbulent period covering the Chinese–Japanese War, World War I, and the Cold War. Politicians and generals cannot win wars if they do not have resources. This book focuses on the lives and achievements of seven finance ministers, advisors, and central bankers from Japan, China, Germany, the UK, the USSR, and the US. They all had connections, and their stories are interlinked. 1935–55 was a time of conflict, confrontation and destruction. It was also the time when the skills of economists were called upon to finance the military, to identify economic vulnerabilities, to help reconstruction. Economics was first used as a policy tool, and economists started to gain importance: macroeconomics, managerial economics, and computing were all born during this time. The reader sees the struggle to raise funds by taxing peasants, controlling banks, working in disrupted debt markets, inflating currencies, and cajoling aid-givers. There is tension between civilian resources and military requirements. There are desperate attempts to control economies wracked with inflation, depression, political argument, and fighting. There are clever schemes to evade sanctions, develop barter trade, and use economic espionage.There are struggles to apply good economic policy in the regimes of despots like Stalin, Hitler, and Chiang Kai-shek.. This book will interest economists, devotees of military history, and interested lay readers alike. It is a book about economics, but it is also a human story.