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Banking in National Socialist Germany, 1933–39

Within the wide-ranging and voluminous published historical research concerned with National Socialist Germany, banking is practically the only topic that has not aroused scholars' interest. There are a considerable number of reasons explaining this particular lack of attention, of which two may be overriding. First, few historians are equipped with the necessary analytical methods for testing Leninist allegations that fascism (or National Socialism) was 'the rule of the most reactionary and aggressive groupings of the financial capital'. Second, most of the files of the Reichswirtschaftsministerium [Ministry for Economic Affairs], of the Reichsbank and of the major joint stock banks were captured by Soviet forces. They were subsequently transferred to the authorities of the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik [GDR] yet remained closed to historians until the downfall of the communist dictatorship in 1989. Nonetheless, sufficient evidence was available to historians that would allow an empirical analysis of banking in National Socialist Germany. All the balance sheets of the joint stock banks were accessible and, with certain reservations, comparable and reliable. However, despite the publication of aggregate data concerned with the supply of credit, no major attempt at an empirical analysis of the credit sector in Germany was undertaken by either economists or banking historians. Although some valid assumptions about a decline of the power of the banking sector were made, the necessary empirical underpinning lacked precision and analytical stringency. It remained necessary to reconstruct the most important decision processes