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

by Adam Tooze

In purely commercial terms the Berlin Great Banks were amongst the chief ‘losers’ of the Nazi economic recovery.45 Between 1932 and 1939, in which period German output more than doubled, the total assets of the Berlin Great Banks rose by only 15 per cent. By contrast, the assets of the savings banks, the main vehicle for what one might call ‘popular liquidity’, rose by 102 per cent over the same period. At the same time, the international business of the Great Banks was sharply curtailed by the collapse in Germany’s foreign trade. The funds accumulating in the accounts of bankers’ industrial clients made them more independent than ever before of bank loans. And those that did need external funding for the regime’s high priority projects could turn to new, state-backed lenders such as the Bank fuer Industrie-Obligationen or the Aero-Bank of the Luftwaffe.