Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/98365 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
Center Discussion Paper No. 905
Publisher: 
Yale University, Economic Growth Center, New Haven, CT
Abstract: 
Armament minister Albert Speer is usually credited with causing the boom in German armament production after 1941. This paper uses the annual audit reports of the Deutsche Revisions- und Treuhand AG for seven firms which together represented about 50 % of the German aircraft producers. We question the received view by showing that in the German aircraft industry the crucial changes that triggered the upswing in aircraft production already occurred before World War II. The government decided in 1938 that aircraft producers had to concentrate on a few different types, and in 1937 that cost-plus contracts were replaced with fixed price contracts. What followed was not a sudden production miracle but a continuous development which was fuelled first by learning-by-doing and then by the ongoing growth of the capital and labor endowment.
Subjects: 
German armament miracle
World War II
Albert Speer
Aircraft industry
Learning-by-doing
Fixed-price Contract
Labor productivity
JEL: 
H57
L64
N44
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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