Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

The "Aryanization" of Jewish assets under National Socialist rule was one of the most massive property transfers in German and European history of the twentieth century. It was not only a creeping political process guided by Nazi Party directives but also a social process in which numerous actors and beneficiaries partcipated. Although banks did not have a decisive hand in this process, their function was nonetheless important, as they acted as brokers and intermediaries between Jewish owners and "Aryan" parties. They pocketed commissions, sounded the political terrain, and brought their expertise and business connections to bear on a process that eventuated in the total displacement of Jewish entrepreneurs and their economic destruction.

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Yet the actual concrete behavior of the banks in the framework of "Aryanization" has remained shrouded in relative darkness. For many decades, the large German banks were adamant in refusing to grant interested researchers access to their files. This changed in the 1990s, in significant measure due to sustained international pressure, but initially most banks opened their files only to a commission of select historians. This exclusiveness in procedure is regrettable in respect to freedom of research, yet it does not reflect negatively in the least on the historians comprising the special commissions or the validity of their scientific findings. The present volume on the Deutsche Bank grew out of Harold James's participation in one such historians' commission on the bank's role in the economic war against the Jews under the Nazis. Let me state at the outset: this study provides solid, important research on "Aryanization" and is far removed from any sort of "in-house historiography."

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