The purpose of this book is to provide a new comparative evaluation of the wartime economic experience of six great powers: the UK, USA, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USSR. It asks: what contribution did economics make to these countries' war preparedness, and to winning and losing the war? What was the effect of wartime experience on the postwar fortunes of the great powers? It aims to provide a text for students of international and comparative economic history, the history of World War II, the history of economic policy, and comparative economic systems, and a work of reference for scholars engaged in research in these fields.

The scope of each chapter includes each country's economic war potential, military-economic performance, war expenditures and losses, and the long-run impact of World War II on each country's economy. Each country's prewar size and development level, economic system characteristics, and military-economic policy are considered in relation to the part they played in the war effort of their respective coalitions, and in the outcome of the war as a whole. Existing interpretations of wartime economic performance are reviewed and revised: what does the wartime experience tell us about the capacity and durability of different economic systems, the effectiveness of regulation by quantities versus prices, the social and economic limits on resource mobilization, the policy and practice of rearmament ‘in width’ or ‘in depth’, and the role of foreign resource transfers? Hypotheses about whether the war helped to remove or entrench institutions hindering long-run economic development are also reappraised.