About this book
Walther Rathenau’s Die Organisation der Rohstoffversorgung confronts how a nation organizes raw materials under the strains of total war, offering a vivid, first-hand account of economic mobilization during World War I. Delivered as a 1915 lecture, Rathenau describes the unprecedented effort to channel industry, transport and supply into the service of war, tracing how practical necessity produced new authorities and modes of coordination that skirted the edges of socialism and central planning without embracing ideological dogma.
Part history, part political-economy analysis and part wartime memoir, the audiobook lays out the strategies behind raw material allocation, the creation of administrative structures that emerged from the old Prussian War Ministry, and the civic spirit of experts and volunteers who pooled knowledge and invention. Rathenau’s prose balances technical explanation with reflections on solidarity, state intervention, and the long-term consequences for German economic life.
Ideal for listeners of history, economics, and war stories, this concise lecture offers students, policymakers, and anyone curious about resource management a clear portrait of how societies reorganize production in crisis. Listen to understand the practical mechanics and moral questions of wartime economic organization and its echoes in modern debates on planning and security.
