Austrian Banks in the Period of National Socialism

Description

This book is the English translation of Gerald D. Feldman's contributions to the multi-author, two-volume study OEsterreichische Banken und Sparkassen im Nationalsozialismus und in der Nachkeriegszeit, which was originally published in German by C. H. Beck in 2006. Austrian Banks in the Period of National Socialism focuses on the activities of two major financial institutions, the Creditanstalt-Wiener Bankverein and the Landerbank Wien. It details the ways the two banks served the Nazi regime and how they used the opportunities presented by Nazi rule to expand their business activities. Particular attention is given to the role that the Creditanstalt and Landerbank played in the 'Aryanization' of Jewish-owned businesses. The book also examines the two banks' relations with their industrial clients and considers the question of whether bank officials had any knowledge of their client firms' use of concentration camp prisoners and other forced laborers during World War II.

Gerald D. Feldman (1937-2007) was one of the pre-eminent historians of Germany of his generation. He joined the history department at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963 and spent his entire career there. His numerous publications include the seminal study The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics, and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1924 (1993). In the later years of his career, Feldman focused on the activities of private companies during the Nazi era and their involvement in the regime's economic policies. He served as an advisor to the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. An active supporter of European-American scholarly dialogue, Feldman participated in the founding of the Friends of the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, and was the group's president at the time of his death. Peter Hayes is the Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor in the Department of History at Northwestern University. He has written widely on German industry during the Nazi era. His books include Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (2000) and From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (2007).