The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

by Adam Tooze

On the basis of emergency decrees first issued during the latter stages of World War I, the Business Groups were also empowered to collect compulsory reports from their members, establishing an unprecedented system of industrial statistics.34 After 1936 they were authorized to penetrate even further into the internal workings of their members, with the introduction of standardized book-keeping systems. The really indispensable functions of the Business Groups, however, concerned the operation of the New Plan. On the import side, the supervisory agencies all had staff drawn from the Business Groups.35 On the export side, from the summer of 1935 onwards it was the Business Groups that were charged with assessing the turnover of their members and administering the levy that funded the export subsidy.