Deutsche Bank & the Nazis
By Leslie Feinberg
It's never been a secret that Deutsche Bank was
Hitler's lead banker.
But on Feb. 4, the bank released documents that
revealed for the first time how Deutsche Bank financed much of
the construction of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Deutsche Bank--the largest in Germany--faces
claims for its role in seizing property and other wealth from
Jews during the fascist reign, as well as for its bankrolling
of the Nazis.
Bank historian Manfred Pohl, who made the
documents public, alleged that they were only discovered
recently. They provide evidence of the secret SS-controlled
accounts used to transfer funds stolen from Jews who had been
deported or sent to death camps.
In addition, Pohl named 10 companies--including
the I.G. Farben chemical giant--that borrowed money to build
Auschwitz. He added that bank managers received regular
construction updates and therefore knew precisely what the
money was used for.
Deutsche Bank A.G. has been forced to negotiate
survivor claims as a precondition for its $10.1 billion
purchase of Bankers Trust. Some of the biggest German
industrial companies are also currently facing survivor claims
over their use of slave labor during the Nazi regime. These
include DaimlerChrysler, Siemens and Volkswagen.
The hand-over-fist profits made during the Nazi
regime by these and other top bankers and industrialists
reveals what the apologists, pundits and ideologues of
capitalism would most like to obscure: the class bedrock of
fascism.
Which class holds reins of power?
Perhaps no other historic period of capitalist
rule has been so mystified and purposefully stripped of its
class content. Fascism has been explained as a historical
aberration. An inexplicable explosion of racism and national
chauvinism. A surprise coup d'état.
These unscientific characterizations of the
victory of fascism in Germany obscure an understanding of
fascism and its relationship to capitalism.
When recalling WWII, the U.S. ruling class
cloaks itself as the "good guys." Democracy versus fascism.
Good battling evil. This further obfuscates the truth about the
class character of fascism. And most importantly, it leaves
workers and oppressed peoples without a clear view of how to
fight it.
In a class-riven society, the state is the
instrument by which one social class rules over another.
Fascism, like democracy, is a form of state.
When the form of state changes as dramatically
as it did in Germany, the first question should be: Has a new
class risen to power? And which class profits from the
ascendancy of one form of state over another?
Both capitalist democracy and fascism are class
dictatorships. The small wealthy class that lays claim to all
the instruments of mass production, finance and communications
rules over the numerically large laboring class that produces
all the wealth of society.
The bourgeois republic in Germany was a great
advance over the Hohenzollern monarchy, which reigned until
1918. But the democratic rights it afforded had been won
through fierce mass workers' struggles.
By the early 1930s, German capitalism--like
U.S. capitalism--was in a deep economic depression. The
powerful workers' movement in Germany was in a revolutionary
mood. They resisted the right of the banks and corporations to
make the working class pay for the economic crisis.
Faced with a challenge to their class rule, a
wing of German bankers and industrialists funded Hitler's rise
to power.
Despite the Nazis' anti-capitalist demagogy and
genocidal anti-Semitism, the purpose of fascism was to smash
the working-class movement and every remnant of democratic
rights won through decades of class battles.
The Nazis portrayed themselves as "National
Socialists" who would use the state to intervene in the
economy.
But did a new class come to power with the
consolidation of Hitler's victory?
In fact, the same wealthy class remained in
power. The Nazis expropriated the wealth of only the relatively
small number of Jewish financiers and industrialists.
But the fascists' intervention into the economy
was capitalist state intervention. They channeled huge tax
breaks and capital to the ruling class in order to gear up war
production. As a result, segments of the German ruling class
profited handsomely from fascism.
In his book "The Arms of Krupp," historian
William Manchester wrote that "virtually all Germans and a
majority abroad believe that German industrialists had no
choice, that the Nazis forced them to use slaves of all ages
and sexes, that the industrialists themselves would have been
exterminated had they behaved otherwise.
"This is untrue. The forgotten mountains of
Nuremberg documents are quite clear about this. They reveal
that the Reich's manufacturers not only had a choice; most of
them took advantage of it."
Manchester pointed out, for example, that
inmates from 138 concentration camps provided slave labor for
the 400-year-old Krupp family military-industrial dynasty.
Same class holds power today
Following WWII, in territory liberated by the
Soviet Red Army, a different form of state rule was set up.
The German Democratic Republic tried to
establish an armed state of the working class to suppress the
former owning class and its fascist military and police. In
East Germany, known Nazis and their sympathizers were ousted
from office and arrested.
In West Germany, the capitalists remained in
power and many former Nazi officials retained their posts in
the state.
The U.S.--which only opened a second front
against Germany when it appeared that the Soviet Union could
defeat Hitler--helped one of Hitler's top Nazi military
officials rebuild the German state machinery after the war. The
U.S. gave General Adolph Heusinger the U.S. Legion of Merit and
appointed him NATO's military planning chief.
In the Sept. 27 German national election this
fall, voters ousted rightist Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his
Christian Democrats after 16 years in office.
But the new governing coalition of the Social
Democratic Party (SPD) and the Green Party does not threaten
the German capitalist system, nor does it even promise
significant reforms.
The same class of bankers, industrialists and
corporate bosses is still firmly in the seat of power today--in
Germany and in the United States.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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