War crimes of the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank: Office of Military Government (U.S) Reports

Abstract

In November 1946, US Government financial experts inside former Nazi Germany concluded that Germany's most powerful banks must be liquidated if lasting peace was to be achieved. The giant Deutsche and Dredener Banks had completely intertwined themselves with the Nazi regime and were directly responsible for the systematic theft of Jewish property, slave labour, and financing the construction of SS concentration camps. As the Americans in the Finance Division of the Office of Military Government (US) -- OMGUS -- saw things at the time, the bank leaders should be tried as war criminals and barred from ever holding any positions of importance in German political or economic life. However, these recommendations were never implemented. In fact, many of the officials of the Deutsche Bank went on to be some of the most important figures in German economic development in the postwar period. The Deutsche Bank secretly retained almost a ton of gold taken from the dead at concentration camps; the Dresdener Bank re-emerged as a multinational financial giant. Meanwhile, the US Government buried the 500+ page report of its financial experts in classified files, where they gathered dust for decades. Today, the Deutsche Bank is the largest financial institution in the world and the Dresdener Bank is not far behind.