Due to the huge financial burden that the maintenance of the military operations would have on the economy, techniques were thought up to help solve the burden. One such technique was the process of debasing the coinage. This was used in many countries that used coins from precious metals and they would debase the coins. This however didn't last very long as inflation started to increase. Various governments in charge attempted to curb the high cost of inflation through new reforms but some of their attempts just got steadily worse with the increasing bureaucracy that the government had to maintain as well as the huge amounts spent on welfare payments to the growing population worse.

Loot and plunder - or at least the prospect of such - may play a role in war economies। This involves the taking of goods by force as part of a military or political victory and was used as a significant source of a revenue for the victorious state. During the first World War when the Germans occupied the Belgians, the Belgian factories were forced to produce goods for the German effort or dismantled their machinery and took it back to Germany – along with thousands and thousands of Belgian slave factory workers.