Das Reichskommissariat für die Behandlung feindlichen Vermögens im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Eine Studie zur Verwaltungs-, Rechts- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte des nationalsozialistischen Deutschlands. By Stephan H. Lindner · Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991. 178 pp. Tables, notes, and bibliography. DM 58. ISBN 3-515-051971-1.

Abstract

This is a brief study of the interministerial and interagency struggles that surrounded the administration of enemy assets in Nazi Germany. The Reichskommissariat fur die Behandlung feindlichen Verm6gens, which was a creation of the German Foreign Office, operated in a manner similar to its equivalent, the American Alien Property Custodian, at least as regards assets either located within the borders of the Reich or not owned by Jews or other Eastern-peoples in occupied Europe. With these exceptions, foreign properties came under a benevolent form of trusteeship that kept enterprises intact. Such a benign policy made good sense, according to Stephan Lindner, and therefore it was hard to dislodge. Foreign-owned factories contributed to the war effort to the same extent as others. Profits could not be repatriated owing to currency controls. A hard line would have invited retaliation not only in enemy nations but in many neutral countries, which, though subject to U.S.-British pressures, had maintained trade links to the Continent. In the event of a compromise peace, finally, a policy of forbearance and moderation might have protected the Reich from seizures like those following the First World War. Most of Lindner's account describes successive challenges to Reichskommissariat policy mounted by self-seeking Nazi economic factions like the Goring complex. The reader might have gained a fuller appreciation of what was at stake in these contests if, instead of recounting such essentially repetitious episodes, the author had compared specific instances of factory administration by each of the two sides in the struggle. Nevertheless, this dispassionate analysis is a welcome addition to a literature that helps explain why, except for victims of Nazi racism, business as usual was the usual business response in the Third Reich.