Seriously, I don’t think this was in the sacred texts of any religion I’ve ever heard of. But whatever.
Not a whole lot to report for Thursday, either. I forgot to mention that on Wednesday, the bus’s AC failed, so the driver stopped the bus and we had to wait 20 minutes for another bus. When it’s 113 F, not having AC on the bus is not a great idea.
I’ve been reading The Wages of Destruction, though it’s been pretty slow going. It’s all about how Nazi Germany managed its economy in the years before WWII. It’s more interesting than you’d think, as the author shows that Germany in 1930 was not an awesome economic powerhouse, but was barely managing to keep afloat from one crisis to the next. They had plenty of chemical plants and factories, but they were dependent on imported animal feed (seriously) and didn’t have nearly enough housing. Per capita income in Germany in 1930 was roughly equal to the per capita income of Iran in 2005. Many people lived 3 to a room in substandard housing. The original plans for war drawn up in the 1930s relied heavily on using horses to transport artillery. I’m still only halfway through the book, and probably won’t finish it before I have to return it on Saturday.
2 users commented in " Nazi economy, donuts "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackYeah, that’s fairly well known historically. Germany was pretty much headed for bankruptcy around 1940 if war hadn’t broken out; once it did, well, they got to loot half of Europe.
Horse-drawn transportation wasn’t terribly unusual in the 1930s in any army though; mechanisation was in its infancy, and money was tight because of the Depression.
Also, technically, Germany in 1930 is the Weimar Republic (at the beginning of the Great Depression to boot, not fun times for anyone), not Nazi Germany – Hitler didn’t get elected til 1933.
“Fairly well known”? Maybe for people who were in better school systems. . . the history classes in my school didn’t cover anything that happened after 1900. There are vast areas of history that I know only the broadest things about.
The author said that people look at Germany today and then think that Germany in the 1930s must’ve been very high tech–but it wasn’t. I just found the idea of hauling military equipment with horses amusing, since horses are easier to damage and/or spook than cars and trucks are.