ABSTRACT
At the end of World War II, relatively few such records came to light, partly because of wartime destruction and postwar chaos and partly because the Allies treated such matters as secondary issues, even when they put German industrialists on trial. Thereafter, the firms involved or their successors proved reluctant to acknowledge their deeds and open their records to scholarly scrutiny, fearing legal claims, damage to their corporate images, and embarrassment to some of their leaders. Understanding the role German big business played in the so-called Aryanization of the German economy begins with an accurate appreciation of the relative economic position of Jews at the outset of the Third Reich. On the whole, that position had been declining for at least twenty years, both in prominence and distinctness, both within the country as a whole and within the leading ranks of the corporate world in particular.
