Mason's theory of a "flight into war" being imposed on Hitler generated much controversy, and in the 1980s, he conducted a series of debates with economic historian Richard Overy on the matter. Overy maintained the decision to attack Poland was not caused by structural economic problems but was the result of Hitler wanting a localised war at that particular moment. For Overy, a major problem with the Mason thesis was that it rested on the assumption that although unrecorded by the records, that information had been passed on to Hitler about Germany's economic problems. Overy argued that there was a major difference between economic pressures that were inducted by the problems of the Four Year Plan and economic motives to seize raw materials, industry and foreign reserve of neighbouring states as a way of accelerating the Four Year Plan. Overy asserted that the repressive capacity of the German state as a way of dealing with domestic unhappiness was also somewhat downplayed by Mason. Finally, Overy argued that there is considerable evidence that the state felt that it could master the economic problems of rearmament. As one civil servant put it in January 1940, "we have already mastered so many difficulties in the past, that here too, if one or other raw material became extremely scarce, ways and means will always yet be found to get out of a fix".