From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich

Description

From Cooperation to Complicity is a study of the Degussa corporation, a firm which played a pivotal role in the processing of plundered precious metals in Nazi-occupied Europe and controlled the production and distribution of Zyklon B, the infamous pesticide used to gas the inmates of Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps, during the Third Reich. The author traces the extent of the corporation's involvement in these and other Nazi war crimes, including the Aryanization of Jewish-owned property and the exploitation of forced labour, and delineates the motivations for such conduct.

Peter Hayes is Professor of History and German and Theodore Z. Weiss Professor of Holocaust Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (new edition, Cambridge, 2001), which won the Conference Group on Central European History's biannual book award in 1988. He is also editor of Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World (1991), and four other collections. He has written more than 40 articles published in German, French, Italian, as well as English. In 1997-98, he was the Shapiro Senior Scholar in Residence at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

' ... excellent new study ... Hayes lays to rest certain myths that persist with respect to many German corporations during the Third Reich ... the moral grey areas that define Degussa's story during the Third Reich make for gripping reading ...' Holocaust and Genocide Studies 'Hayes has produced a remarkable and highly readable book. From Cooperation to Complicity is impressive in overview, rich in detail, and , not the least, balanced in its judgements.' Zug