Hello and welcome back. This is WAR 1870–1949: How Empires Rise and Fall. Today’s episode is The Economy of War—the machinery beneath the speeches, the quiet engine that makes conflict not only possible but increasingly likely. You asked the right questions: who, why, when. And you framed it perfectly: this becomes more and more ardent. It doesn’t stay a background detail. It moves forward until it becomes a kind of gravity.

To understand the economy of war after 1918, you have to abandon the comforting idea that war is only a political decision made in a room by a few leaders. War is also an ecosystem. It has supply chains. It has employment. It has credit. It has industrial planning. It has contracts. It has lobbyists and ministries and generals who measure security in steel. It has journalists who translate fear into public appetite. It  ...