(This appeared in my email inbox as a "Quora Question." The following is my Quora answer.)

How about “Blood & Loot” rather than “Blood & Gold”--as gold was pretty much out of the picture for individual citizens of nearly all nations of the world by 1939. Looting however remained essential and characteristic, along with blood. WWI was the last “Blood & Gold” world war.

“Gold” was only a memory and symbolic of wealth for nearly all people anywhere by September 1939, what is generally recognized as the start of WWII (although war had already broken out in Ethiopia. Spain. China. and Finland, forerunners to world war prior to September 1939). Using emergency edicts—some based on WWI financial needs during or shortly after the War (most European nations), and some later (like the US and Switzerland), based on ‘30s Depression-related “fiscal requirements”—all governments of the world had already looted their own citizens of whatever monetary gold they could squeeze out of them.

Switzerland in 1936 was the last nation to deprive its citizens of gold convertibility in the national currency, meaning all citizens of the world were reduced essentially to faith in the integrity of the fiscal policies of their own national governments. Gold left in the hands of individuals was privately, secretly hoarded, therefore hidden or buried—and if national governments couldn’t pry it out or seize it, foreign invaders would have an even more difficult time looting whatever was left.

Looting for WWII from the standpoint of individual citizens therefore predominately took the form of taxation and fines in local currencies (paper claims on the produced wealth of national citizenries), whether by the citizens’ own governments or by invading/occupying powers, as well as by direct confiscation of land and personal property (whatever of value that could be moved), most often by invading/occupying forces.

I would say therefore that while blood of soldiers and citizens remained characteristic of WWII, gold was out of the picture. Yes, wealth of citizens (and therefore of nations) was destroyed in this war as in all wars but, by 1939, wealth was no longer measured directly in gold as it had been worldwide prior to WWI—and by the 1930s in a few hold-out nations. So, by 1939, gold was only symbolic of wealth to average citizens while looting of citizens by their own national governments took the form of currency taxation and indirectly compelled or directly forced production, then later by invading/occupying powers in the form of land and personal property seizure.