Abstract
This article explores the similarities and differences in the persecution of economic elites in Germany and the occupied countries after the war. The shift of power after the liberation deeply influenced the process by which national elites were formed. However, below the highest ranks of administration and business, a remarkable continuity among the industrial managers and entrepreneurs can be discerned. At the local level, the persecution of elites often stagnated because the commissions deployed in administrative capacities were not capable of affecting changes in personel. Besides the punishment of criminal offenders, sanctions on businesses were enforced (confiscation of illicit profits) as well as career-related sanctions for individual collaborators. It was only in the state socialist countries that there was a major shift in elites due to the expropriation and nationalisation of the industrial sector. Ultimately, all the countries urgently needed skilled people especially engineers and technicians for the reconstruction of the post-war economies.
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