Concerns over the balance of trade did not apply to imports. A system was created to allow Germany to run a trade deficit with occupied countries: foreign exporters dispatched their goods to German importers, their own national banks paid them and the Reichsbank assumed a debt to those national banks. The debt went unpaid and the whole system would have to be reviewed once the war was over.
Nonetheless, a large part of the economy was still devoted to producing goods for export, even though this happened at the expense of producing armaments. While a deficit was held with France and the Benelux, a trade surplus was achieved over particularly fragile economies (Norway and Poland) and balanced trade occurred with neutrals and allies in central and eastern Europe. In the case of the Balkans, this is a reversal of the 30s, when Germany ran deficits. Exports were needed to keep their economies running –even France’s- and to gain political favor.
Trade deficits were compensated by the exaction of occupation costs over conquered states. Such costs greatly exceeded actual expenses on garrisoning those states.

The Wehrmacht could now order armaments from factories on occupied territory. However, the once large French war industry was, like the rest of its economy, suffering under severe logistical and resource limitations, and the same was true for Belgium and the Netherlands.
-Railways were crippled by German requisitioning of rolling stock, harming even the transit of raw materials.
-France and the Benelux were heavy oil consumers and their access to overseas oil was irreplaceably cut off, leaving the limited production of Romania and German synthetic plants to cover the whole continent. Severe rationing was imposed with France getting 8% of its prewar oil. This expanded the logistical crisis.
-Mobilization and blockade removed fertilizer (which competed with explosives over certain raw materials), horses, manpower and imported animal feed from the “delicate ecology of European peasant farming”, triggering an Europe-wide food crisis. Food is a critical subject and will be covered in detail on a section of its own.
-Western Europe relied on coal imports that were cut off. On paper there was enough coal in Axis Europe to make up for this, but that would require a comprehensive logistical reorganization that never took place in wartime conditions. Expanding production in local fields wasn’t any easier because of the food crisis, which hit labor-intensive work such as coal mining hard.
As a result, occupied industry could not contribute to Germany a fraction of what America gave Britain. In 1942 7,775 aircraft were shipped across the Atlantic compared to mere 743 produced in France and the Benelux. Productivity was chronically low; it took four times as many workers to produce a German plane in France than in Germany. Foreign labor was more useful within Germany itself and many such workers were conscripted; that will also have a section of its own.

Even Germany’s economy was just barely trudging along. Coal, not iron, was now the limiting factor to steel production as mobilization prevented the mines from hiring the best labor, though they did not lose workers.
For other raw materials, particularly oil, the situation was worse. Whereas Britain was worried whenever its oil stocks fell below 7 million tons, German stocks peaked at only 2 million tons in January 1941. With captured Western stocks and low military activity resources were available for the moment, but with scarce sources (for oil, Romania and coal hydrogenation) that could not last and problems were expected to emerge after the middle of 1941. Fuel scarcity was already harming the Italian navy and the training of truck drivers in the Heer.