Did big business play a crucial role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power? Did German capitalists undermine the Weimaqr Republic, finance the Nazi Party, and use their influence on behalf of Hitler's appointment to the chancellorship of Germany? For half a century, such charges as these have been repeatedly made, and today one of the most widely held explanations for the Third Reich's origins places prime responsibility on Germany's leading corporations. Astonishingly, this subject has never been adequately explored--and until now it was commonly believed that the records that might throw light on this important connection had been either lost or destroyed. In the pages of this groundbreaking book, Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., shows us that these records do indeed exist. And the evidence that leads him to his startling conclusion--that big business did not, on balance, support Hitler's political program--overthrows many of our conventional ideas about the rise of Hitler's regime. German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler takes us through the major corporate archives of Weimar and Nazi Germany and inside the executive offices of the giants of Germany industry--I. G. Farben, Flick, Krupp, Siemens, and many others. It shows us the dynamics between corporations and political machines, businessmen and politicians, industrial associations and political parties. Beginning with an examination of the heritage of German big business and the role it played in the politics of the Weimar Republic, Turner scrutinizes the attitudes of the Nazi Party leadership--Hitler in particular--toward economic issues and big business. He then traces the known contacts between the Nazis and the men of big business down to the triumph of Nazism in 1933. For the first time, the story is told form both sides, employing documentation from Nazi as well as business sources. In the course of assessing the significance of financial contributions to Hitler's party, the author provides the first systematic analysis of Nazism's sources of income. He also gives us a new window, not only on Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, but also on the behavior of 20th-century plrivate corporations, their executives, and their influence on our times.

German big business before 1933 did not, on the whole, support Hitler and his political program. Antisemitism was regarded by German business circles with distaste as a vulgar and plebeian phenomenon, and the Nazis had to play it down. Nazi attacks on Jewish "finance capitalism" are also mentioned.

For big business in Germany and around the world, Hitler and his National Socialist party were good news. Business was bad in the 1930s, and for multinational corporations Germany was a bright spot in a world suffering from the Great Depression. As Jacques R. Pauwels explains in this book, corporations were delighted with the profits that came from re-arming Germany, and then supplying both sides of the Second World War. Recent historical research in Germany has laid bare the links between Hitler's regime and big German firms. Scholars have now also documented the role of American firms — General Motors, IBM, Standard Oil, Ford, and many others — whose German subsidiaries eagerly sold equipment, weapons, and fuel needed for the German war machine. A key roadblock to America's late entry into the Second World War was behind-the-scenes pressure from US corporations seeking to protect their profitable business selling to both sides. Basing his work on the recent findings of scholars in many European countries and the US, Pauwels explains how Hitler gained and held the support of powerful business interests who found the well-liked one-party fascist government, ready and willing to protect the property and profits of big business. He documents the role of the many multinationals in business today who supported Hitler and gained from the Nazi government's horrendous measures.

For big business in Germany and around the world, Hitler and his National Socialist party were good news. Business was bad in the 1930s, and for multinational corporations Germany was a bright spot in a world suffering from the Great Depression. As Jacques R. Pauwels explains in this book, corporations were delighted with the profits that came from re-arming Germany, and then supplying both sides of the Second World War. Recent historical research in Germany has laid bare the links between Hitler's regime and big German firms. Scholars have now also documented the role of American firms — General Motors, IBM, Standard Oil, Ford, and many others — whose German subsidiaries eagerly sold equipment, weapons, and fuel needed for the German war machine. A key roadblock to America's late entry into the Second World War was behind-the-scenes pressure from US corporations seeking to protect their profitable business selling to both sides. Basing his work on the recent findings of scholars in many European countries and the US, Pauwels explains how Hitler gained and held the support of powerful business interests who found the well-liked oneparty fascist government, ready and willing to protect the property and profits of big business. He documents the role of the many multinationals in business today who supported Hitler and gained from the Nazi government's horrendous measures.

‘The contribution made by American capitalism to German war preparations can only be described as phenomenal. It was certainly crucial to German military capabilities... Not only was an influential sector of American business aware of the nature of Naziism, but for its own purposes aided Naziism wherever possible (and profitable) - with full knowledge that the probable outcome would be war involving Europe and the United States.’ Penetrating a cloak of falsehood, deception and duplicity, Professor Antony C. Sutton reveals one of the most remarkable but unreported facts of the Second World War: that key Wall Street banks and American businesses supported Hitler’s rise to power by financing and trading with Nazi Germany. Carefully tracing this closely guarded secret through original documents and eyewitness accounts, Sutton comes to the unsavoury conclusion that the catastrophic Second World War was extremely profitable for a select group of financial insiders. He presents a thoroughly documented account of the role played by J.P. Morgan, T.W. Lamont, the Rockefeller interests, General Electric Company, Standard Oil, National City Bank, Chase and Manhattan banks, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, General Motors, the Ford Motor Company, and scores of others in helping to prepare the bloodiest, most destructive war in history. This classic study, first published in 1976 - the third volume of a trilogy - is reproduced here in its original form. (The other volumes in the series study the 1917 Lenin-Trotsky Revolution in Russia and the 1933 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States.)

During the past decade, the role of Germany's economic elites under Hitler has once again moved into the limelight of historical research and public debate. This volume offers a brief but focused introduction to the role of German businesses and industries in the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich.