Harold James on Deutsche Bank review.pdf (165.4 kB)
The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi economic war against the Jews: the expropriation of Jewish-owned property, by Harold James [review]
journal contribution
posted on 2014-08-05, 09:11 authored by Jeremy LeamanJames’ book is the second study produced in the context of a special commission of
historians, invited by the Deutsche Bank in 1998 to examine the history of the Bank
between 1933 and 1945. The first study by Jonathan Steinberg dealt with the Bank’s
gold transactions in the Second World War. The English title of James’ study differs
significantly from the parallel German publication by Beck, which bears the less
contentious title Die Deutsche Bank und die “Arisierung” but it reflects more
accurately the underlying assumptions in the work of a polarity between German state
policy - the ‘Nazi’ economic war against the Jews - and the strategy of an important
but subordinate private company. Make no mistake, James identifies considerable
evidence of complicity by the Bank in acts of theft and dehumanisation in relation to
the Jewish population of both Germany and the wartime occupied territories. He
quotes examples of transactions, where the Bank scrupulously applied the
increasingly strict rules of state ‘dejudification policy’, lending them the respectability
that attached to Germany’s biggest private bank.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEWVolume
75Issue
4Pages
910 - 912 (3)Citation
LEAMAN, J., 2001. The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi economic war against the Jews: the expropriation of Jewish-owned property, by Harold James [review]. Business History Review, 75 (4), pp. 910-912.Publisher
Cambridge University Press (© The President and Fellows of Harvard College)Version
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publication date
2001Notes
This article has been accepted for publication and has appeared in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input by Cambridge University Press, in Business History Review published by Cambridge University Press.ISSN
0007-6805eISSN
2044-768XPublisher version
Language
- en