Language:
English
Year of publication:
2004
Titel der Quelle:
Business and Industry in Nazi Germany
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2004) 15-42
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Economic aspects
Abstract:
Based on a lecture presented at the second symposium of the Miller Center for Holocaust Studies, University of Vermont, in 2002. The Nazi accession to power in 1933 offered some opportunities but also embodied dangers for the large banks and insurance companies - the National Socialists agitated against big financial capital and expressed their preference for small financial institutions. Under the Nazi dictatorship, managers of these institutions met the new policies with anticipatory obedience, trying not only to diminish possible damage but also to achieve gains. In particular, they were ready to endorse the anti-Jewish policies when it was profitable for them. For instance, the management of the big financial institutions removed its Jewish employees in order to placate the Nazis. The Nazis protected the insurers from having to pay twenty million marks for damage done to Jewish property during the "Kristallnacht" pogrom; and financial institutions obediently liquidated assets and insurance policies of Jews who had emigrated or had been deported to the East in 1941-42. Financial institutions also participated in the Aryanization of Jewish property both in the Reich and abroad, and in exploitation of Jewish labor in the ghettos.
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