War finance

T. Balderston, War finance in Britain and Germany, 1914-1918 , Economic History Review, 42 (1989), 222-44. 

As in the First World War, the Treasury saw the purpose of war finance as the adjustment of production and consumption so as to maintain essential supplies for the civil population, while securing the largest possible proportion of national income for the government. In 1939 the Treasury thought that at least one-half of national income should be made available for government needs.Table 4.5 shows that... 

Sir Richard Hopkins, Draft statement on war finance for the National Joint Advisory Council on 6th December 1939 , T 175/117, TNA. 

Haber was slow to grasp the implications of the Nazis rise to power. As Germans boycotted Jewish businesses and Hitler s brownshirts removed Jewish students from university libraries and laboratories, the Nazis passed a law on April 7, 1933, to cleanse the civil service and universities of Jews. By this time, Haber s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was financed by the government and its employees were treated as civil functionaries subject to the new law. Haber himself was exempt because of war work and seniority. Eager for a chemical warfare center, Nazi authorities singled out Haber s institute and ordered him to fire its Jews. At the same time, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society told Haber to somehow keep his important senior scientists. He had until May 2 to act. 

The other factories, however, made products that had no large peacetime use, such as the explosives-intermediate hexogen. The total production was financed by the Wehrmacht. The factories were built exclusively for war Farben insisted on this form of financing because "the production is war material and no assured peacetime market can be expected." Farben refused the use of its name. To many Germans, and to many more people in the outside world, these Farben-Wehrmacht factories were known simply by the names of the cities where they were located. 

On the eve of war, every bit of income earned by all the Dynamit Nobel A.G. factories was banked through the central finance office of I.G. Farben at Berlin Northwest 7. 

Niall Ferguson, Public finance and national security the domestic origins of the First World War revisited . Past and FV< s< nt, 142 (1994), 141-68. 

War policy report , 6 Sep. 1915, CAB 27/2, and Report of Cabinet Committee on the Co-ordination of Military and Financial Effort , 4 Feb. 1916, CAB 27/4, TNA. For McKenna s failure to persuade his Cabinet colleagues to relate strategy to what the national finances would sustain in a long war, see Martin Farr, A compelling case for voluntarism Britain s alternative strategy, 1915-1916 , War in History, 9 (2002), 279-306. 

The biggest problem, however, was financing British purchases in the United States on the cash and carry basis that prevailed in 1939-41 Britain s gold and dollar reserves fell from 519 million in September 1939 to 108 million by the end of 1940 and American securities owned by British residents were requisitioned and sold as fast, and perhaps faster, than the New York stock market could absorb them. Initially the intention had been to spin out the reserves over a three-year war and purchases of American munitions were limited as tightly as possible, so as to allow scarce dollars to be spent on machine tools and... 

Karl grew up in a stimulating family environment with five brothers and four sisters, all of whom entered professional or business careers, or gave their time freely to service activities. While he was still in high school, Karl s aptitude for chemistry revealed itself—when the chemistry teacher was called away for service in the First World War, Karl was asked to teach his fellow students until a new teacher could be found. His choice to study Agricultural Chemistry in the University appears to have been determined in part by finances, because Link once said that, if he had had just a bit more money, he would have entered Medical School. 

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