Before the Storm: German Big Business and the Rise of the NSDAP
Date
2016-05
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
German big business and the Nazi Party held a dubious historical relationship during the Second World War, with industrialists helping to produce and run Hitler’s war machine with forced labor from the concentration camps. But the ties between industry and Nazism were not always so strong and clear-cut; before 1933 and Hitler’s acquiring of the German chancellorship, varying complex factors played a role in how the two groups viewed one another. Hitler and his ideological pillars matched well with the economic and political views of the Nazi business elite, and he attempted to build a relationship before 1933, through which he could secure funding from industrialists.
Some historians have used this evidence to imply that German big business played a substantial role in funding the Nazi Party during its rise to power. My research, however, will disprove this point and also explain why, even with Hitler’s close ties to German industry, a relationship could not develop between the Nazi Party and business leaders. The project will focus considerably on the Nazi left-wing, which was the major road block in such a relationship taking flight. I will eventually prove that German big business did not provide major financial support to the Nazis before 1933, but also explain why the factors keeping the two groups apart would quickly disintegrate after Hitler’s coming to power. This rapid disintegration would allow for the wartime relationship between Nazism and Germany industry, as well as the conquest of much of Europe.
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Keywords
NSDAP, history