German Wartime Industrial Controls: an Analogy to Recovery from Nuclear Attack
Abstract
The research developed strong inferences from German wartime experience, which bear on the conduct and organization of early postattack recovery. The assumption that national recovery could proceed only with a centrally planned and controlled economy should be reexamined thoroughly; e.g., it may be possible to pass from fragmented regional economies directly to a national market economy as the Bonn Republic has done with evident success. Direct damage assessment for economic recovery would have to be conducted by informed technical-industrial personnel from private industry, working outward from the intact areas into the zone of recoverable assets, with or without central direction. The German experience demonstrates that an advanced industrial-capitalist economy possesses significant reserves of productivity. Recent changes in the U. S. economic structure appear to promise a degree of autonomous productive capacity for the surviving fragments, which must be the basis of recovery. Good data exist for specific studies of German wartime experience of interest to Civil Defense planning (e.g., civil and industrial reconstruction programs and certain essential recovery operations and techniques, such as rubble clearance, refugee assimilation, and emergency public finance). (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1967
- Accession Number
- AD0663799
Entities
People
- Terence Jr G. Jackson
Organizations
- SRI International