The fullest account to date of German Jews' struggle for economic survival under the Third Reich.

During the past decade, the role of Germany's economic elites under Hitler has once again moved into the limelight of historical research and public debate. This volume offers a brief but focused introduction to the role of German businesses and industries in the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich.

The robbery and restitution of Jewish property are two inextricably linked social processes. It is not possible to understand the lawsuits and international agreements on the restoration of Jewish property of the late 1990s without examining what was robbed and by whom. In this volume distinguished historians first outline the mechanisms and scope of the European-wide program of plunder and then assess the effectiveness and historical implications of post-war restitution efforts. Everywhere the solution of legal and material problems was intertwined with changing national myths about the war and conflicting interpretations of justice. Even those countries that pursued extensive restitution programs using rigorous legal means were unable to compensate or fully comprehend the scale of Jewish loss. Especially in Eastern Europe, it was not until the collapse of communism that the concept of restoring some Jewish property rights even became a viable option. Integrating the abundance of new research on the material effects of the Holocaust and its aftermath, this comparative perspective examines the developments in Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Belgium, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

The Degussa corporation played a pivotal role in the processing of plundered precious metals in Nazi-occupied Europe and controlled the production and distribution of Zyklon B, the infamous pesticide used to gas the inmates of Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps, during the Third Reich. Peter Hayes traces the extent of the corporation's involvement in these and other Nazi war crimes, including the Aryanization of Jewish-owned property and the exploitation of forced labor, and delineates the motivations for such conduct.

Bernard Bellon combines a detailed study of the daily lives of factory workers at Daimler-Benz with a broader discussion of the role of the automobile industry in the economic and political development of Germany from 1903 through the end of World War II.

Penetrating revelations of Nazi confiscation of Jewish property, and of robbery's intimate relationship to the Holocaust.