The Historiography of the Holocaust

Big Business and the Third Reich 149
the growth of savings banks (Sparkassen), traditional competitors of the moneycentre
banks, and new large state-owned firms that could function independently
of the banks. For banks, their weakened economic and political positions
meant that they had little power to influence policy and that so-called ‘acts of
defiance’ were nugatory efforts to carve out a tiny sphere of independence. By
and large, and to various degrees, they sought to maintain their ‘relevance’ and
economic viability by taking on the tasks that the state left to them. As James
notes:
In practice, the financial world offered little direct opposition to the regime.
Instead, confronted by a world that no longer appeared to need them, bankers
explained their compliant positions to themselves by saying that they were
doing nothing more than facing realities and then trying, however ineffectually,
to mould them as best they could. 30
In short, shaken by the depression and already highly controlled by the state
in January 1933, banks made the purging of ‘Jewish influences’ much easier. As
early as May 1933, leading Jewish members of the board of Deutsche Bank,
including Oscar Wassermann, the spokesman of the Vorstand, resigned. By 1938,
Deutsche Bank, which had a large Jewish cadre in top and middle management
in 1933, had lost virtually all its Jewish employees. But Deutsche Bank’s ‘pact with
the Devil’ brought limited rewards for its shareholders. Even though revenues
increased dramatically in the late 1930s, the use of much of the bank’s profit was
controlled by the state and realized in an ever more precarious currency subject
to significantly higher taxes and dividend restrictions. 31
Like many areas of Holocaust historiography, revisions to our picture of
Aryanization – forced ownership changes from Jews to non-Jews – have highlighted
the evolutionary process of removing Jews from the economic life of
Nazi Germany. 32 It has been recognized for many years that many of the earliest
Aryanizations were unorganized attempts by the party to expropriate small
Jewish companies for the party faithful as a reward for the loyalty of small- and
middle-sized companies. Big business’s involvement began tentatively, sometimes
at the behest of former business partners who happened to be Jewish. In
many of these cases in the mid-1930s, German companies took pains to treat the
former owners well and rarely used pressure to force a quick sale or favourable
terms. Many deals were brought to them by Jewish bankers and owners. As the
party tightened its grip on the economy with what appeared to be its infallible
success, and with fewer Jews active in business life in any case, transfers of
firms owned by non-Aryans became a ‘normal’ part of business. Companies were
more willing to use their Aryan status and connections with party officials to
squeeze target companies. As German military might reached its peak and victory
seemed assured, this process of normalizing extortion seems to have reached