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

by Adam Tooze

they earned, direct investors were treated no better than the holders of Germany’s other foreign debts. They were all subject to the same exchange controls that made it possible to exchange Reichsmarks for foreign currency only at punitive discounts. At one point, in a desperate effort to liquidate its investment in IG Farben, DuPont of the United States offered to sell shares valued at $3 million in 1929 for less than $300,000.106 Britain’s ICI did finally manage to sell its shares in IG Farben, but only after protracted negotiation and only after accepting a complicated swap involving shares in IG’s Swiss affiliate. Not surprisingly, once the initial panic was over, most of Germany’s trapped investors chose to stay put and to plough back the profits they earned. In this sense they were subject to the same logic as the rest of German business. Even if they could not distribute profits in the ordinary way, they could at least achieve vigorous capital accumulation.