The Historiography of the Holocaust

150 Christopher Kobrak and Andrea H. Schneider
its culmination outside Germany in Czechoslovakia and Poland, where even
non-Jews were considered to be ‘inferior beings’. Unfortunately, in some wider
studies about the persecution of Jews, the extent and methods used to remove
them from economic life have been neglected. 33
James’ new study of Deutsche Bank, published in 2001 simultaneously in
German and English, is probably the most up-to-date work on Aryanization. 34
James outlines Deutsche Bank’s ‘room for manoeuvre’ in the increasingly
dictatorial regime, and how the leaders of the bank moved from denying the
dangers inherent in their new political realities during the very early days, to
complying cautiously with some of the policies of a regime that had not yet
proved its durability in the mid-1930s, to treating ‘the political circumstances
as part of a general business context, in which profitable business could be
generated’. 35
In 1937, as Germany stepped up its war preparations, the pace, breadth and
intensity of Aryanization also accelerated. Although, according to James,
Deutsche Bank did not make a lot of profit from its Aryanization activities, its
enthusiasm for these transactions markedly increased as Germany expanded
into central Europe. By 1938, Deutsche Bank had been involved in 569 Aryanizations,
of which 363 were completed. Nearly half were in retail or clothing
factories. 36 In most cases, its involvement was restricted to brokering or financing
the transactions; in a few, Deutsche Bank took possession of the assets itself.
Although many companies were much more aggressive than Deutsche Bank
had been with Aryanizations, such as the Flick concerns, among manufacturing
companies, and Dresdner Bank, among the financial institutions, the basic
outline presented by James has been confirmed by many other studies.
Recently both Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank have opened their archives to
qualified experts. 37 Preliminary findings of the teams of historians working on
these projects have found that Aryanizations were not always at the behest of
political orders – as is often argued – but rather arose out of competitive pressures
and expansion strategies, and that the timing and methods differed
greatly depending on the views of local party officials and branch managers. 38
All the studies emphasize these significant differences from branch to branch
within the banks, especially for transactions involving smaller Jewish businesses
without any business influence, particularly those companies without longterm
banking relationships or foreign connections. 39 Despite the importance of
specific bank relations, and local and sector factors in explaining Aryanization,
some studies stress the role of bank associations in national coordination of
the process of removing Jews from the economic life of the new regime. 40
Although local factors seem to have played less of a role, among commercial
companies there is also a wide range of experiences. It seems generally true,
however, that larger, more international companies were less likely to exploit
the predicament of their Jewish countrymen, at least before September 1939. 41