Was OTL WWII an Axis-wank or Axis-screw?

Italy's military expenditures are pretty disappointing in terms of the total amount of money spent, and that with the air force and nav getting over half the budget (not sure how its split).

The figures for the curious, in millions of current (as of the book's release, so 1987) dollars:

1930: 266
1933: 351
1934: 455
1935: 966
1936: 1,149
1937: 1,235
1938: 746
Going from 455 million in 1934 to 966 million in 1935, wow, talk about overheating. No wonder Italy's finances collapsed in late 1937. Normally, it would've needed about 5-6 years to recover from the whole mid-late 30s adventurism (which ironically, instead of strengthening its position as a Great Power, as Musso hoped, actually critically weakened it, since the money dumped on the Spanish and African operations was money not spent on machine tools and blueprints). Time, however wasn't on Benny's side, and neither was his own personality. When Italy joined with Germany, it truly was a case of the whole being less than the sum of its parts, and thankfully, the dumb Nazis never saw it coming.

For comparison, here's Germany and Britain:

1930: 162/512
1933: 452/333
1934: 709/540
1935: 1,607/646
1936: 2,332/892
1937: 3,298/1,245
1938: 7,415/1,863
Which just goes to show how impressively moronic the Nazis were in their pursuit of rearmament. From 1934-onwards they constantly (and consistently) outspent the British, yet their performance in the early war was based overwhelmingly on luck, rather than technological superiority. All they had to show for the enormous amounts of spent money was a bunch of useless crap (like, say, for instance, the vast majority of their surface navy).
 
Last edited:
Top