The Book Prize Index

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

Adam Tooze

**The Wages of Destruction** is a non-fiction book detailing the economic history of Nazi Germany. Written by Adam Tooze, it was first published by Allen Lane in 2006. The Wages of Destruction won the Wolfson History Prize and the 2007 Longman/History Today Book of the Year Prize. It was published to critical praise from such authors as Michael Burleigh, Richard Overy and Niall Ferguson. In the book, Tooze writes that after the Germans had failed to defeat Britain in 1940, the economic logic of the war drove them to an invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler was constrained do so in 1941 to obtain the natural resources necessary to challenge two economic superpowers: the United States and the British Empire.

Business & EconomicsBusiness & Economics · medium confidenceBusiness & Economics81 signalsLlm Classifier: Business & Economics -> Business & EconomicsKeyword Classifier: American History -> American HistoryKeyword Classifier: Business & Economics -> Business & EconomicsWorld War IICold War & Nuclear PoliticsEmpire & ColonialismEnergy, Extraction & Resources

Award History

1 wins · 2 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Wolfson History PrizeMajor2007WinnerOfficial source
PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize: Historical Nonfiction2007ShortlistSecondary source
View all award history (2)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Hitler38%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Soviet Union45%
    • Britain40%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    After Germany failed to defeat Britain in 1940, the war’s economic logic drove an invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 to obtain natural resources needed to challenge the United States and the British Empire.

    Model confidence 52%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    46 / 100 academic

    Trade / academic crossover

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 56%.