Profits and Persecution
German Big Business in the Nazi Economy and the Holocaust

Explores how and why German big business became instrumental to the persecution of the European Jews during the Holocaust.

Peter Hayes (Author)

9780521772884, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 January 2025

224 pages
23.6 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.48 kg

'[A] masterful historical synthesis and a poignant meditation on the failures of business leadership which remains distressingly pertinent in the present. Beyond its historical merits, it ought to be required reading in all business schools.' Sophus A. Reinert, Business History Review

What role did German big business play in the persecution of European Jews during the Holocaust? What were its motivations? And how did it respond to changing social and economic circumstances after the war? Profits and Persecution examines how the leaders of Germany's largest industrial and financial enterprises played a key part in the catastrophes and crimes of their nation in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on evidence concerning the roughly one hundred most significant German firms of the Nazi era, Peter Hayes explores how large German corporations dealt with Jews, their property, and their labor. This study unites business history and the history of the Holocaust to consider both the economic and personal motivations that rendered German corporate leaders complicit in the actions of the Nazi Party. In doing so, it demonstrates how ordinary, familiar thought processes came to serve the ideological purposes of the Third Reich with lethal consequences.

Part I. Prologue, 1918–1933: 1. Path-dependence
2. Ambivalence
Part II. Autarky and Armament, 1933–1939/41: 3. Compliance
4. Monopsony
5. Dejewification
Part III. Total War, 1939/41–1945: 6. Mobilization
7. Exploitation
8. Annihilation
Part IV. Aftermath, 1945–2024: 9. Outcomes
10. Summary.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]