Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933–1945

This book investigates the history of the Allianz AG insurance corporation in the Nazi era.

Gerald D. Feldman (Author)

9780521809290, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 October 2001

592 pages
23.6 x 16 x 4.2 cm, 0.942 kg

'This important work by Feldman demonstrate the value of continuing to focus scholarly labours on interpreting and elucidating the implications and consequences of the National Socialist dictatorship … very significant contributions to this literature … One of the elements that makes Feldman's book so compelling is the author's keen eye for the bizarre and unexpected twists …'. Financial History Review

This history of the internationally prominent insurance corporation Allianz AG in the Nazi era is based largely on new or previously unavailable archival sources. Feldman takes the reader through varied cases of collaboration and conflict with the Nazi regime with fairness and a commitment to informed analysis. He touches on issues of damages in the Pogrom of 1938, insuring facilities used in forced labour camps, and the problems of de-Nazification and restitution. The broader issues examined in this study - cooperation with Nazi policies, the way in which profit, ideology, and opportunism played a role in corporate decision-making, and the question of how Jewish insurance assets were expropriated - are particularly relevant today given the ongoing international debate about restitution for Holocaust survivors. This book joins a growing body of scholarship based on free access to the records of German corporations in the Nazi era.

Preface
List of abbreviations
1. The Allianz concern and its leaders, 1918–33
2. Allianz, Kurt Schmitt, and the Third Reich, 1933–4
3. Adaptation and aryanization
4. Allianz and the Reich group: politics of the insurance business in the period of regime radicalization, 1936–9
5. The 'Night of Broken Glass' and the insurance industry
6. Allianz, the insurance business, and the fate of Jewish Life Insurance Policies, 1933–45
7. Allianz, Munich Re, and the insurance business in 'greater Germany'
8. Allianz and Munich Re in the Second World War
9. Confronting the past: denazification and restitution
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Second World War [HBWQ], The Holocaust [HBTZ1], European history [HBJD]