Today the most militarized country on earth is north korea, with 23,3% of it's total GDP and over seven million (about 25% of the population) at arms.
While extremely self destructive and impressive at the same time, this amount of war spending is not so much as we saw in the 1940s europe:
I remember reading somewhere that nazi germany spent about 45% of it's GDP on the armed forces by 1939.
based on this I want to ask: It is possible to completely militarize a nation in the 20th century, to the point that over 50% of the population and the GDP is at arms? Once someone pointed to me that Burma had a socialist stratocratic dictatorship from the 1960s until 2011, but still didn't reached this levels shown above. There is a scenario (or to be more precise, a game) called "The New Order" were Ferdinand Schorner can take over nazi Germany in the 1960s and do a level of militarization high as it is described above, but as it is commented on the forum of the game this is completely unsustainable.
One example on fiction about a state like that is Amestris from the anime Full metal alchemist, that got it's own citation on wikipedia:
"The country of Amestris in the Fullmetal Alchemist manga and anime series is a nominal parliamentary republic, where parliament has been used as a facade to distract from the authoritarian regime, as the government is almost completely centralized by the military, and the majority of government positions are occupied by military personnel."
What are your toughs on this?
While extremely self destructive and impressive at the same time, this amount of war spending is not so much as we saw in the 1940s europe:
I remember reading somewhere that nazi germany spent about 45% of it's GDP on the armed forces by 1939.
based on this I want to ask: It is possible to completely militarize a nation in the 20th century, to the point that over 50% of the population and the GDP is at arms? Once someone pointed to me that Burma had a socialist stratocratic dictatorship from the 1960s until 2011, but still didn't reached this levels shown above. There is a scenario (or to be more precise, a game) called "The New Order" were Ferdinand Schorner can take over nazi Germany in the 1960s and do a level of militarization high as it is described above, but as it is commented on the forum of the game this is completely unsustainable.
One example on fiction about a state like that is Amestris from the anime Full metal alchemist, that got it's own citation on wikipedia:
"The country of Amestris in the Fullmetal Alchemist manga and anime series is a nominal parliamentary republic, where parliament has been used as a facade to distract from the authoritarian regime, as the government is almost completely centralized by the military, and the majority of government positions are occupied by military personnel."
What are your toughs on this?