I just wanted to add a podcast about with David Edgerton, the author of Britain's war machine. Obviously it lacks the depth of the book and the stats but it gives a decent overview on the economic and military situation. I just had to cringe that the interviewer, after coming up with good questions and decent imputs finished it off with the terrible conclusion that in 1940 Britain, not Germany actually understood how to win a modern war.

Modern research makes it in my opinion rather obvious that while there was (almost naturally) a great amount of miscalculations on all sides the importance of a highly productive economy for the modern's war effort was all too plain for both. Mr. Hitler himself was all too concerned with the lack of basic ressources like oil, ore and food that the purpose of wars was to conserve, get and to secure access to them. Ironically Britains plans concerning Norway reflected a very similar British mindset in that instance, but in general Britain could get it's necessary imports, financed mostly by others no less, by different means. In short a negative outcome does not necessarily mean that the problem was not understood, in this case there were certainly wrong conclusions but most of all one side just had far weaker starting position. There are a great amount of ifs and buts to go into as well as much scope to discussions but economically I will leave it there.

@Biggus: I agree and it retrospective it is surprising that it took the scientific community so long to come up with a book like Wages of Destruction or partly Britain's War Machine. The importance of economic aspects was very well understood during the war by all sides but those aspects became pretty unpopular compared to the 'real' cool, heroic or brutal stuff. Sadly it is understandable as its narrative tends to be far less gripping and spectacular but fortunately there are examples like Tooze's work which are excellent proof to the contrary.