Trial of the Major War Criminals before International Military Tribunal ...

considered to be Jewish. Thus non-Jewish property was taken
over as well.
(b) After Invasion of March 15th; 1939.
After the invasion several Czechoslovak banks in Bohemia
became, by means of the Aryanisation, the property of the Bank
of Dresden; the German bank took over, among others, the Union
Bank of Bohemia. In this way all financial interests which these
banks had
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in Czech industry as well as their entire share-capital, fell into
German hands.
Hence started the penetration of German bank capital into the
Czech banks, their expropriation and incorporation into the German
bank system. The "Dresdner Bank" (being the actual establish-
ment for handling the funds of the National Socialist Party) and
the "Deutsche Bank" were officially entrusted with the task of
expropriating the funds belonging to the Czechoslovak Banking
concerns.
By diverse "transactions", by gaining influence through the
Sudeten Branch Banks upon the Prague Headquarters of the respec-
tive banks, by reducing the share capital and then increasing it
with German help, by acquisition of industrial holdings and thus
gaining influence upon the controlling banks, by depriving banks
of their industrial interest, etc., the two Berlin banks gained
complete control over the banks of the Protectorate. Gestapo terror
helped them.
The control of the Czechoslovak banks meant actually the control
over practically the whole industry directed by the Dresdner Bank
and Deutsche Bank on the one hand, and by the big German
industrial concerns on the other hand.
C. Destruction of the National Industry.
(a) Compulsory Organisation.
After the invasion the Germans introduced on the German model
a compulsory organisation of the Czech industry of the Protec-
torate. They appointed a committee of the new association and of
all the manufacturing ".groups" putting at least one Nazi on each
of them either as chairman or vice-chairman or quite innocently as
an ordinary member. Practically all the Czech members remained
mere lay figures.