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Got to disagree with you on your point about resource wars being fictional. Japan's expansion in the 1930's and into the 40's was ALL about resources and access to them. It was no fiction that they needed access to oil, rubber etc. to continue their imperialist desires and that desire itself was due to the fact that Japan was largely shut out of resource trading by the Western Powers whose own imperial desires had led them to dominate most of Asia in order to gain the resources they needed to feed that desire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_...es_and_markets
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Japan's aim was autarky, a totally self contained and prosperous economic system where there would be no requirement for foreign involvement. Resources were only part of the picture as was elimination of European colonial holdings in east Asia and a military/cultural requirement to dominate. You missed the latter part of my statement, that other factors are always included in so-called resource wars and frequently the resources are not the root cause but rather an incidental benefit. Had oil and rubber alone been Japan's goal, Pearl Harbor made no sense since Roosevelt would never have gone to war to save the Netherlands East Indies.
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Germany's economic wealth in the later part of the 1930's was also deficit based, which meant that it was funded by loans which, in a number of historian's opinions, Hitler never intended to repay. Going to way was one way of doing that. In the four years before 1939, wages, and prices were fixed by the government and violators were interred in concentration camps. Their massive unemployment problems in the early 30's were solved in part by removing Jewish workers from the economy and replacing them with unemployed non-Jews.
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The existence of deficit spending had more to do with the unhealthy taxation policy of Germany inherited from the federal Second Reich and the Republic. Until hostilities broke out Germany could easily service its debts and no unforeseen financial crisis was pending so the level of government spending remained significant. As for Hitler intending to default, we don't know since he never got the chance. That Germany defaulted on reparations payments, considered unfair and imposed at gun point, does not automatically indicate non-payment of legitimate debts.
The use of slave labour was an net economic drain and a bad idea for reasons that had nothing to do with the human cost. Slavery doesn't work in free market industrial economies and the Nazi pogrom against the Jews was entirely self-defeating from an economic standpoint alone. Also, Germany's labour shortage was exacerbated by a bloated Party apparatus and Civil Service that absorbed huge numbers of potential workers and the total failure to utilize German women in industry in any systemic way. Standing polices and inefficiencies, some endemic to the regime, others inherited from Wiemar created the conditions where slavery seemed to provide a quick fix.