I'm reading Adam Tooze's The wages of destruction (after seeing it mentioned often in this subreddit and also here) and i'm halfway through.
Now, i read very often (sorry just memory, no sources) statements like 'The economy of Nazi Germany was not fully geared for war until 1942-1943' while, in the book, i read that Germany, before acquiring vast territories with the victory in the west of 1940, had serious shortages of raw materials and processing capacity (for example: moving resources through railroads from the coal mine to the factories) already before 1939. Therefore i cannot understand how, given the Nazi management at that time, the country could have produced more military equipment even when there was virtually no disruption due to the allies bombing in the period 1939-1942.
Hence the question in the title.
Thanks in advance for your time.
PS: I apologize if my question was already asked, could you be so kind to provide a link to the previous submission?
Seems that this problem is addresses by A.Tooze himself in the chapter 16 of the book. My interpretation of its point is: the economy before 1942-1943 was not full of inefficiencies, was just gathering the inertia for improving its output (the actions started year before started to pay off). Speer did improve some management procedures, but the increase of production was more or less expected. For example: (a) military products started to be more standardized and workers gets more used to produce them, therefore this increased the production (b) foreing/forced workers were treated relatively better and therefore their productivity increased (c) work shortages were offset by more and more foreing/forced labour. Still there were management disasters like new factories for producing thousands of powerplants for airplanes never really finished and so on.
Yes it is true to say the Nazi Germany did not mobilize it's war economy fully till the latter half of the war.
Like wiking85 has already helpfully mentioned, this is mainly due to the sheer labyrinthine nature of the Reich's armaments and economics industries. It was not until Dr. Todt began to consolidated ministries and root out corruption that things began to change; after his untimely death Albert Speer came in and took this program to a whole new level.
Under Speer the armaments industries of each branch of the Wehrmacht as well as the regional departments and the various governments of the occupied territories was differed to him in what was a political masterstroke that infuriated Goering, who was head of the rival economic department of the Four Year Plan (famously Goering who had a talent for collecting titles rushed to the Wolf's Lair in Eastern Poland from one of his many hunting lodges when he heard of Todt's demise, with the intention of deferring all Todt's original titles and responsibilities to him, only to be told that Speer had inherited them.) Speer would continue to outmaneuver his political enemies for the most part, though he often clashed with the regional party leaders the Gauleiters who controlled labor allocation for their various region and where on whole notoriously corrupt.
Speer's new implementations were rather draconian, with hoarding of materials and labor, false statements, diverting funds etc etc being meet with punishments from fines to death sentences. He also introduced shift work (which until then was unheard of) and shortened the amount of variables being built (an example of this is that over 200 different trucks were being produced, which was shortened down to 30-40 types) The overall result was arms production going up by 60 percent, which increased year on year until 1945.
(The Good Nazi by Dan ver der Vat)
Its pretty complicated and Tooze even glosses over major issues in some categories; in terms of aviation production the increases after 1942 were the result of ending the massive corruption in that industry that occurred until Ernst Udet. Richard Overy: Goering Hitler's Iron Knight Richard Overy: War and Economy in the Third Reich Homze: Arming the Luftwaffe Daniel Uziel: Arming the Luftwaffe (same title different book)
There was a lot of corruption and competing priorities that resolved in 1942 with the rise of a single economic leader, Albert Speer, after his predecessor died in a mysterious airplane explosion after fighting with Goering for control of the war economy. Previously there were all sorts of ministries and agencies fighting over production, labor, resources, power, etc. that was mostly resolved by mid-1942. About that same time capital investments mostly ended as Germany then, pretty much by 1943 and on, focused the vast majority of their resources into weapons production to the exclusion of all else. Its economy was geared toward war since at least 1938, just not weapons production, as they were trying to build up their weapons/synthetic materials industry until 1942.