The author of the book has a rather deterministic view of the possible outcome of the second world war. While I may disagree with him, I think that he presents his view with sound arguments, but he is not very intellectually honest (or maybe he doesn't know many statistical material concerning the second world war). My criticisms here concern mostly his coverage of the military aspects of the war, with of course, tend to be inferior to his coverage of economic aspects of the war, with are his specialty.
He wants to defend his view that the outcome of the second world war was given as victory to the allies and that Germany didn't stand a chance of surviving a war against them, however he defends that view using distorted statistics. For example, at the Battle of France, Tooze claims that the Allies had 4,500 combat aircraft while Germany had 3,600. But according to E.R Hooton 2007, p. 47-48, the Allies actually had only 2,930 aircraft ready to be deployed while the Germans had 5,640 aircraft ready to be deployed. Which helps to explain why the Germans managed to have airsuperiority at the battle of France. Other examples abound in the book. For the battle of Kursk, Tooze uses a statistic of 2,450 German tanks and SP guns vs 5,130 soviet tanks and SP guns. In fact there are several different estimates for the number of tanks present at the battle, according to Bergström 2007, we have 3,000 German tanks and SP guns versus 3,600 Soviet tanks and SP guns. In several parts of the book he apparently selected his statistics to reflect his views that Germany was fighting against completely overwhelming odds in terms of materiel and men. I have written only two examples here, but with time I can find dozens.
He also says, implicitly, that in the 1944-45 period was the period were German casualties were much greater than preceding periods. He then cites that 1.8 million Germans soldiers died in 1944 and 1.4 million Germans soldiers died in 1945. These statistics are taken from Rudiger Overmans' survey on German military deaths in WW2, this survey has the highest number of German military deaths of the many sources I know. Overmans calculates the number of total military deaths by summing up KIA (2.3 million) + MIA (2 million) + died of wounds (0.5 million) + died in captivity (0.5 million) = 5.3 million. Overmans concluded that 1.75 million died in 1944 and 1.29 million in 1945. Then Tooze rounds up these statistics to 1.8 million and 1.4 million. So in fact, he takes the highest statistic of German military death available and even increases it! But speaking of Overmans's survey it is quite ridiculous to sum up MIA and the number that died in captivity, since the soldiers missing were captured and then died in captivity (in other words: double counting), unless you include the number of soldiers that died after the war, with is not relevant to his purpose of arguing that combat was more intense to the Wehrmacht in 1944-45 than preceding years.
So how the picture looks like if we view only the number of KIA per year?
According to van Creveld 1982, these are the total number of German KIA by fiscal year:
1939-1940 (12 months): 73,829
1940-1941 (12 months): 138,301
1941-1942 (12 months): 445,036
1942-1943 (12 months): 418,276
1943-1944 (12 months): 534,112
1944-dec.1944 (4 months): 167,335, yearly rate: 502,005
The fact is that German combat KIAs were roughly constant from 1941 to 1945, and Soviet combat casualties too: in 1941 the USSR lost 4.3 million men in 6.5 months (KIA+MIA+WIA) about 660,000 per month, in 1945, the USSR lost 2.8 million in 4 months, 700,000 per month. Since around 90% of German KIA was in the Eastern front there is not evidence that the war was more intense in 1944 than in 1941. While since German soldiers were better trained in 1941 than in 1944, I can even argue that the wehrmacht suffered more in 1941 in terms of loss of combat power and fighting edge than in 1944, since the soldiers lost in 1941 were the cream of the army while in 1944 most losses were composed of not-as-good recruits.
To book exaggerates the contributions of the Western allies to the war, in fact, the casualties that Germany suffered against the western powers were almost insignificant compared to the losses against the Soviet Union. Even in 1945, second to Glantz, Germany had 67% of her casualties in the eastern front, which makes sense since in January 1945 (with marks the peak of the allies relative participation in ground warfare), of the 338 divisions equivalents of the wehrmacht, 228 were in the eastern front while only 73 in the western front. In the 3 years from june 1941 to june 1944, about 95% of Germany's casualties were in the eastern front. According to Glantz the western allies probably only contributed to shortening the war in 12 to 18 months. The most important strategic contribution of the Western Allies was the crippling of the Luftwaffe between 1943 and 1945, which permitted an increase of the speed of advance of the Russians in the eastern front, since resources were shifted from production of bombers to counter the Red Army to the production of fighters to counter Bomber Command and the US's 8th airforce.
Tooze critizes Albert Speer, the minister of armmaments during the last 3 years of the war, and the view that Germany`s production of munitions was badly run during the first years of the war. But, during his term (1942-1945) per capita productivity in munitions production more than doubled. No other country reached such high levels of increases in productivity of the munitions related industries. We have two possible reasons: Germany`s munitions production was blady run in the first years of the war, or, at the last years Germany`s production of munitions was incredibly well run. He cannot dismiss the increase in productivity from 1941 and 1944, calling it an statistical illusion.
Also, by comparing relative strengths in the fronts, the allies only had about 90 to 100 divisions in the western front in 1944-45, while Germany had over 300, of with about 200 to 250 were fighting the 400-500 Russian divisions deployed in the eastern front. In terms of personnel the US had 1.4 million frontline soldiers in Europe by december 1944, while Germany had 5 million soldiers deployed in June 1944, the British complemented the Americans with 800,000 soldiers. So the western allies had 2.2 million men versus around 5 million German soldiers in all of Europe. So, I can argue that without the USSR the allies wound never stand a chance of winning the war with the resources that they historically deployed in the European theater. Since most of the economic power of the allies was in the British-American coalition, this fact represents an asymmetry with Tooze's arguments that economic strength determined the outcome of WW2. In fact, economic strength is very important, but it doest solely determines the winner of an armed conflict. In Vietnam, the US had hundreds of times the resources of North Vietnam, but didn`t manage to protect South Vietnam.
Anyway, Tooze main argument is that by attacking the USSR, Hitler embarked on a journey to his own destruction. He is entirely correct in that regard. And he is correct to point out that using information available in 1941, that the USSR was weaker than history proved it to be. Also, it is correct to state that the lack of raw materials was a factor in Germany's defeat, but it wasn't a major factor since munitions weren't the biggest problem in the German war effort, manpower was the biggest: They didn't have enough soldiers to fill the 3 thousand kilometers of the eastern front, nor the soldiers needed to drive out the allies from Normandy. And the population of Germany would not increase with the conquest of the Soviet Union.
Also, Tooze doesn't discuss the fact that German munitions production followed a rather different path than Soviet and American production. Germany produced munitions after they were needed, tank production increased in 1943 because of increased demand in 1942. Fighter production increased in 1944 in response to increased demand in 1943. These were severe strategic errors. In fact, it appears that Tooze argues that Germany was doomed from the start and the victories of the Wehrmacht between 1939 and 1941 were lucky shots. Well, in 1939 to 1941 the Wehrmacht faced opponents with numerical parity, according to wikipedia, in the Battle of France, there were 3.3 million allied soldiers vs 3.31 million German soldiers, while in Barbarossa, accoring to Nigel Askey, there were 3.316 million German soldiers vs 3.31 million soviet soldiers. At the start of operation Blau, according to Glantz, there were 2 million German soldiers vs 1.8 million Soviet soldiers. All these 3 cases ended with the same result: annihilation of the forces opposing Germany. History showed that when you face Germany with numerical parity you lose. To stop the Wehrmacht, the Red Army lost 29 million soldiers in 4 years, gradually eroding the best soldiers of the German army, transforming the wehrmacht into a shadow of its former self, which was not as "invincible" as the "classic" wehrmacht of the 1939-1942 period.
So the allies took note: since they could not achieve qualitative parity they needed numerical superiority. By June 1944 there were 2.4 million German front line soldiers facing 6.7 million Soviet front line soldiers (in terms of total personnel it was 3.9 million Germans vs 10.5 million Soviet), source: Glantz 1995, while in the western front the allies massed 5.4 million personnel (2.2 million front line soldiers), opposing 1.5 million German personnel (~1 million front line soldiers). Note that the western allies needed a larger proportion of the personnel in logistics and other non combat functions than the USSR and Germany, for quite obvious logistical reasons (the Atlantic sea + English channel). The outcome of the following months was a natural conclusion of overwhelming manpower odds. But also, in the crucial battles of Normandy and Bagration, allied success was in a significant regard a consequence of deception, where the Wehrmacht failed to understand were the main trusts would come, so they only allocated reinforcements in both cases after the odds became extremely bad and the battle was already lost.
So, concluding, Wages of Destruction is a good book, but way overrated as it tries to explain more than can be explained with only the economic aspects of the war. Also his theory of a poor and peripheral Germany compared to the US doesn't stand a closer inspection: from 1901 to 1932 Germany produced 32 Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine, the US produced only 6, the USSR (and the Russian Empire), only 2. These countries were the actual periphery in the pre-WW2 world. For example, the economic superiority of the US didn't translate in massive military superiority in the European theater because of the geographical factors at work (the Atlantic ocean) preventing the deployment of hundreds of American divisions in the European theater, in fact, they deployed only 1.4 million soldiers in the European Theater opposing less than 1 million German soldiers (out of the 5 million front line personnel, mostly concentrated against the USSR). And while the Eastern Front was the decisive front, there Germany in fact had significant economic superiority (producing 4 times more steel, 5 times more aluminium and 5 times more coal than the USSR in 1943) and failed to convert this economic superiority in military superiority over the USSR, particularly in the decisive years of 1942 and 1943. Concluding, basic economic strength played an important role in the war but they were not the main determinant in the outcome. If it were, Germany would have crushed the USSR before the Western Allies could help, so any continental invasion would be destroyed by the hundreds of German divisions freed-ed from the Eastern front. In other words, economics doesn't explain why Germany lost from their strategic position in 1941. The will of the Soviet people is a definite factor to take into account.
That being said, there's an eternal debate as to the real efficacy of the overall offensive, which, is in any case another thread altogether, so we won't derail this one with that