When Dresdner Bank published its 125th-anniversary history in 1997, it dedicated only one line to the bank's role during World War II. Last month, after seven years of research, Dresdner finally owned up to its past in a more thorough fashion, releasing a four-volume independent study detailing its activities during the Nazi era. The commissioned report, prepared by a group of academics at Ruhr University Bochum, documents Dresdner's financing of Huta Hoch- und Tiefbau, the construction company that built four crematoriums in Auschwitz as well as other camp structures. Dresdner, the research shows, was also the de facto house bank of the Nazis' SS paramilitary unit and had close connections to IG Farben, the company that produced lethal gas for Hitler's camps.
"We accept these truths, even when they hurt," Dresdner board member Wulf Meier said in a statement. "With this comprehensive work about the past, the bank accepts the moral responsibility for its business."
In 1999, Deutsche Bank published an account of its Nazi-era history. Commerzbank is expected to release a similar study next year.
Institutional Investor spoke with Dieter Ziegler, a Ruhr University history professor who helped prepare the research for Dresdner.
Institutional Investor: Were you surprised by any of the findings?
Ziegler: We didn't know about Huta. We only found out about it in the final stage of research. But, of course, when you step back and think about it, you realize somebody must have ordered these concentration camps to be built, somebody must have built them, somebody must have financed them. That moment when you first see the files is shocking.
In the study the relationship between the Nazi government and Dresdner Bank is described as "symbiotic." Can we say the same thing about the Nazi regime and other German banks?
Because Dresdner was owned by the government between 1931 and 1937, it was easy to Nazify the bank. With active Nazis on board, it was easier to create a business logic that was closer to Nazi ideology. Dresdner also had very close ties to the SS, something Deutsche did not have, and that gave them business opportunities other banks didn't have. Dresdner had Karl Rasche, a very talented banker and a Nazi. Emil Meyer was not such a talented banker, but he was even more of a Nazi than Rasche. These two were very active, and they had the most influence on the bank, along with Carl Goetz, chairman of the supervisory board.
Dresdner gained subsidiaries in 12 cities by purchasing Jewish-owned banks and industrial companies on the cheap. Was this surprising?
What was most astonishing was how institutionalized it became. After Dresdner took over a bank in Sudetenland [now part of the Czech Republic], they negotiated with the Economics minister about receiving compensation for unsecured credit. The Reich agreed and proposed that they be paid from Jewish securities. Remember, in 1938, Jews had to pay "damages" for unspecified "sins" against society. It was a gigantic fee of 1 billion reich marks. Officially, it was known as the Jewish assets tax.
They often paid the fee from their savings or with their stocks and bonds. These securities normally went to the Prussian securities bank, which valued them and sent them to the Finance Ministry. In Sudetenland, Dresdner didn't have to give the securities to the Prussian Bank. They were allowed to keep them and book the profit as payment for taking over businesses in Sudetenland.
We assumed that no postwar reparations were paid out [in that case] because the securities never landed in the government administration. But we discovered that the families of the former owners were indeed paid postwar damages, because judges in the 1960s couldn't imagine that the shareholdings would have landed anywhere else than the Finance Ministry. Of course, now we know that they landed at Dresdner Bank.
Karl Rasche was convicted of war crimes in Nuremberg and spent seven years in prison. Why was he singled out?
Meyer committed suicide. Goetz was interned in a prison camp for about six months. He feared he too would be put on trial. The other bankers didn't know until 1947 whether they had to stand before the court. Only once the cold war had begun did they know that only Rasche would be tried. At that point they worked to single him out as a scapegoat. Rasche tried to show that it was a community of bankers who made the decisions.
What happened to Goetz?
Because of the cold war, the Americans were no longer interested in putting too many German industrialists and bankers in jail. They needed an economy that functioned. For that reason, Goetz, who was more careful in his private dealings than Rasche, became the strong man at the bank in the late 1940s and stayed there until the 1960s.
What lessons can banks or companies learn from this exercise?
Every businessman, every company, should have a set of ethical rules which should be adhered to all the time. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, you should never compromise those rules. If someone even breaks these rules once, the spiral down to barbarism can't be stopped.
