The attitude of German businesses and their leaders toward the Third Reich was complicated. On the one hand, in most cases ideological conviction was not a big motivator for their actions. On the other hand, by following their rational self-interest, many large companies were subservient to the Nazis and their ideology. This had disastrous consequences, in particular for Jewish victims of persecution, according to Peter Hayes. He quotes Otto von Bismarck : "Motiv ändert die Wirkung nicht." “Motive does not change the effect.”

Author Peter Hayes is Northwestern University Professor Emeritus; Professor of History and German, and Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor of Holocaust Studies. He specialized in the role of the largest corporations during the Third Reich. He taught at Northwestern University (Illinois) until 2016. According to the Northwestern University website, he also served on the academic boards of multiple professional societies and Holocaust memorial sites, including as Chair of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from May 2014 to May 2019. During his career, he wrote several books on the Shoah, including on IG Farben and Degussa.

In Profits and Persecution, Hayes summarizes his academic career of 50 years in an excellent synthesis that takes a comprehensive look at the role of big business in the Third Reich. Some 120 of the largest corporations in Nazi Germany were included in the research for this book. These were not only industrial enterprises, but also, for example, financial corporations, department stores, construction companies and publishing houses.

Hayes's central thesis is that, from the point of view of petty self-interest of an individual or of an enterprise) “in the context of the Third Reich,” the actions of businesses and their leaders could always be considered rational. At the same time, he emphatically notes that the business leaders had to ignore the consequences for others. For example, it was rational for companies and executives to support the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) even before 1933, because established politicians respected the Treaty of Versailles and the consequence of not supporting NSDAP was that companies could not modernize and optimize their production capacity. It was rational to aryanize companies after Hitler's rise to power, because that was the only way to win government contracts. It was rational to produce for rearmament, because that was where the best profit opportunities lay and because the state, as buyer, was the most powerful market player. It was rational to take over Jewish property on the most favorable terms possible, because otherwise a competitor would do so. It was rational to use slave labor because there was a limited supply of labor and failure to meet production targets was dealt with harshly by the regime.

Hayes makes this case by citing many examples for each phase of the Third Reich in which business, if only in the short term, acted rationally according to their self-interest in the context of the Third Reich. A painful example of this is Degesch. Since in 1940 they already supplied the pesticide Zyklon to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where it was used to fumigate clothing, it wasn’t a big step later on to supply it to other camps farther east which used it for the mass murder of humans.

The regime also used various methods to intimidate businesses and their leaders. These included fines, loss of contracts, and loss of patents or rights to raw materials. Some executives were prosecuted personally. In many cases, an example that was made of a specific case was enough to get other businesses to fall in line. It should be noted, however, that if non-Jewish entrepreneurs or executives were personally persecuted they faced a much less severe fate than the Jews.

The flip side of all this is the high price that Jews in particular had to pay -- sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. After Kristallnacht (November 9/10, 1938), for example, insurer Allianz profited greatly by speaking of Jewish provocations and then not paying out claims. During this period Jews lost their positions in companies, their businesses, their shares, and slowly but surely more and more of their property. And where Jews had to part with their property, they did so far below its actual value. Aryan companies or entrepreneurs who took over property took advantage of the dire situation Jews found themselves in. Extortion, threats, and agreements to prevent competing bids were not uncommon. In the end, the Aryanization in which Jews virtually disappeared from economic life took about a year and a half.

After deliberate impoverishment and removal, the next steps were slave labor and genocide. Here, as a result of the war situation and the radicalization of the persecution, business involvement grew over the years. While at first slave labor was mainly in service of the SS, from 1942 private enterprises became increasingly involved. The extent to which enterprises were actually private, however, does call for the observation that Nazi involvement was so strong that the scope for autonomous decisions was quite limited.

Corporate involvement in mass murder changed during the course of the Shoah. In the early years the shootings in Eastern Europe, starvation in ghettos, and gassing in Chelmno and the Aktion Reinhard camps required no major investments or new technological solutions. As a result, by the time German business got more involved, the Nazis had already killed 75% of the total number of Jewish victims that they would murder. The role of business changed particularly during the expansion of Auschwitz to become “the capital of the Holocaust” as Hayes calls it. During this period, the number of prisoners increased significantly. Also in this period, the function of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp shifted even more emphatically from slave labor to mass murder, with many companies playing a role including AEG an IG Farben.

German businesses were also heavily involved in the looting of victims' property. Hayes analyses extensively the role of banks. For example, the LiRo Bank on Sarphatistraat in Amsterdam collected precious metals like gold which were later smelted by Degussa, a company which also smelted the gold teeth of murdered Jews.

Finally, in a disconcerting chapter on the post-1945 period, Hayes shows that the trials of businessmen and administrators fell short. Allied interest in trials quickly ebbed away, and as Germans gained more autonomy, the old elites returned to their original or very similar positions.

Profits and Persecution. The title is aptly chosen. Profits were for corporations and for Nazis who enriched themselves. Persecution was the fate of the Jews. But deeper under the surface, another factor often comes up along with profits. Sometimes they are called "carrot & stick," sometimes "incentives & intimidation.” When German business faced Nazis, those two factors often went hand in hand. In many cases, the prospect of profit was not enough incentive for cooperation with the regime. There was often a certain threat and fear that forced cooperation. This is by no means a defense that absolves business leaders of their responsibility. It does, however, provide an explanation as to why people acted as they did. Not only were there rewards for doing so, there were also serious consequences for not doing so. A few businesses accepted these consequences, but most did not.

Profits and Persecution is not a narrative history, but an in-depth substantive analysis. Anyone with an interest in the political and economic history of Nazi Germany will find in this book very skillfully examined and compiled work. Hayes writes with authority. Occasionally, however, the text is somewhat dry, especially when citing a series of percentages or figures. The use of a table or chart might have added some clarification in such cases.