Germany's Bundesbank confronts dark Nazi origins
March 15, 2024
Germany's Bundesbank shed light on its Nazi roots in a research round-up published on Friday, and promised that it would never allow itself to be used in a similar way.
The central bank released details of how the Reichsbank financed Adolf Hitler's war efforts and was embroiled in exploitation, expropriation, and confiscation.
What did the study reveal?
The Bundesbank commissioned a comprehensive study on the history of central banking in Germany between 1924 and 1970.
The results show that the Bundesbank's predecessor, the Reichsbank, played a significant part in the functioning of the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.
It helped finance armaments for war and allowed the financial exploitation of the territories occupied by Germany, as well as the recording and processing of seized assets.
Researchers found that the bank was deeply involved in the confiscation, expropriation and sale of Jewish assets.
The Reichsbank even handled gold and foreign currency taken from those murdered in the concentration and extermination camps.
"The Reichsbank acted as a willing stooge and receiver of stolen goods in the context of the financial Holocaust," said Albrecht Ritschl, a professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, one of the two leading historians who were commissioned.
What can the Bundesbank learn from its past?
Former employees of the Reichsbank who had undergone denazification were hired into positions after World War II. These were first at the Reichsbank's initial successor founded in 1948, the Bank deutscher Länder, and then at the Bundesbank after it was established in 1957.
Many Reichsbank middle managers were kept in place, reflecting the situation in many of Germany's successor public institutions after the war.
"The degree of continuity in terms of what we might call the functional elite is thus on a par with that seen in ministries and other public institutions," said co-author Magnus Brechtken from the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.
However, the study found there was no continuity where the institution itself was concerned, with neither of the successor banks being legal successors to the Reichsbank. All the Reichsbank's gold was confiscated by the Allies and current Bundesbank gold holdings are the result of surpluses that Germany has recorded since the 1950s.
"The Bundesbank itself has looked to reflect critically on the past," Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said at the press conference in which the academics presented their findings.
"What has been lacking so far, though, is a big picture of German central bank policy before, during and after World War II," Nagel explained. "That's a picture we now have," he added.
Nagel said the researchers had provided "a treasure trove of insights and findings" to be made fully available to the public shortly.
"Their work traces how central bankers became willing accessories to a criminal regime," said Nagel. "It shows how susceptible they were to racism, antisemitism and anti-democratic thinking."
"Never again should minorities be excluded and subjected to state tyranny. Never again should government bodies like the central bank be allowed to trample on democratic values."
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