Industry and Politics in the Third Reich (RLE Nazi Germany & Holocaust) by John Gillingham

Industry and Politics in the Third Reich (RLE Nazi Germany & Holocaust) by John Gillingham

When originally published in 1985 this was the first detailed study of business in Nazi Germany. Drawing on a wealth of new evidence from government and private archives, the book throws light on the important role played by Germany heavy industry in preserving traditions valuable for the post-Nazi future.

Contrary to widely held beliefs, the industrialists of the Ruhr did not master-mind the economic strategy of the third Reich, nor were they the helpless victims of Hitler’s tyranny. In this penetrating study, the author reveals that while the management of the coal industry in the Ruhr certainly cooperated with Hitler, they did so only to the extent that it served their own purposes, which were far less destructive than those of the regime.

Professor of History at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, John Gillingham European Integration, 1950-2002 (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Coal, Steel, and the Revival of Europe, 1945-1955 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), which won the American Historical Association's John Beer Prize for the finest book on the history of foreign relations published that year.