Germany’s Bundesbank confronted its predecessor’s Nazi past in new research published on Friday and vowed it would never allow antisemitism or discrimination.
The bank put out an abridged version of an upcoming series of volumes, at a time when the far right is on the rise in Germany, triggering nationwide protests in a country still scarred by its 20th-century history.
The research, which examined central banking in Germany between 1924 and 1970, detailed how the Reichsbank financed Adolf Hitler’s war efforts, helped the exploitation of occupied territories, and was involved in the confiscation, expropriation, and sale of Jewish assets.
It also processed gold and foreign currency taken from prisoners murdered in the Nazi 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 and one of the authors of the research.
Founded in Frankfurt in 1957, the Bundesbank had little in common with the Berlin-based Reichsbank, which was wound down after the end of World War II and initially replaced with the Bank deutscher Länder.
The Reichsbank’s gold, for example, was confiscated by the Allies. However, some of its staff and above all middle managers were hired by the new institutions after undergoing a process known as “denazification.”
President of Deutsche Bundesbank, Joachim Nagel, speaks during a press conference after the G20 finance ministers meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil on February 29, 2024. (Nelson ALMEIDA / AFP)
Imposed by the Allies at the end of the war, the criteria for such denazification became laxer after 1948 as Germany became more integrated in the West and the central bank scrambled to find qualified personnel, the researchers found.
“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 fellow author Magnus Brechtken, deputy director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.
Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel hoped the 100-page booklet would reach the general public and vowed to learn lessons from it during a press conference to present the research.
The academic work “traces how central bankers became willing accessories to a criminal regime,” Nagel said according to a report from the Deutsche Welle broadcaster. “It shows how susceptible they were to racism, antisemitism and anti-democratic thinking.”
“Never again should there be antisemitism in Germany,” he said, repeating a slogan used in recent demonstrations against the far-right.
“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,” Nagel added.
