Antisemitism was a determining feature of Nazi ideology. The racial state was to be established through the so-called “Judenpolitik,” which aimed to “reduce Jewish influence,” make life for Jews in Germany difficult or impossible, and eventually drive Jews out of Germany. Although this policy was directly inspired by Hitler’s own thinking and by Nazi ideology, the resulting discrimination and persecution, culminating in genocide, was not a linear top-down process but rather the result of a dynamic interaction between central Nazi Party and state institutions, often triggered by bottom-up initiatives by local party activists at municipal level. Terror against Jews was used to drive this policy. It encompassed coercion and violence against Jews or people considered to be Jewish accompanied by legal measures to oust Jews from public life in Germany, reflecting what émigré lawyer Ernst Fraenkel described as a “dual state”: a “state of measure or action,” which used terror to quench opposition and fight “racial opponents,” and the “state of norms,” which employed legislation to achieve its aims while preserving legal certainty in order to avoid antagonizing majority society.

This chapter details the increasingly indispensable part German big business played in expelling German Jews from economic life and dispossessing them, including in the annexed regions of Austria and the Czech lands. Avarice and self-defense were the principal motivators, with the latter becoming increasingly important as time passed.

The grand hoteliers of Berlin, who were also German financial, industrial, and commercial elites, cast their lot with Hitler in 1932. Several factors played into the decision, but the most important was an unshakable pessimism, born of the chaos of 1918–23, especially the hyperinflation of 1923, that never quite dispelled in the years of relative prosperity of 1924–28. After 1929, during the Great Depression, this pessimism hardened into fatalism: that is, certainty that business would fail under present conditions. Under the influence of a contagious fatalism endemic to their milieu by 1932, the Kaiserhof’s owners, in particular, would not have seen or understood the ramifications of their decision to let Hitler use the hotel as his headquarters. On the one hand, the decision at least kept open the possibility of a different future under the next regime. And on the other hand, the alternative, ejecting Hitler, might trigger immediate and violent retaliation by the Brownshirts. In the end, however, these same hoteliers, because they were Jewish, found themselves running for their lives as some of the earliest victims of the Nazi persecution.

Germany’s Sparkassen (public savings banks) were vital to the national economy during the Second World War. They also held a special place in the cultural fabric, as particularly representative of perceived German virtues – hard work, thrift, community – the appraisal of which was heightened during the Third Reich. However, we don’t know much about this sector. How did these “most völkisch” institutions operate during the Nazi era? In particular, how were National Socialism and capitalism intertwined in Sparkassen decision-making and self-representation? This chapter demonstrates that the logics of capitalism remained paramount in the minds of savings bank managers. However, their faith in capitalist principles did not make them any less useful to (or supportive of) the regime. Instead, it allowed bank leaders to rationalize their own behavior and legitimize their support for the dictatorship as good for business.