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The attack against the Soviet Union was ideologically motivated, but the timing owed a great deal to military and economic considerations. German hopes largely focused on Ukraine, which was expected to be both a giant breadbasket and a reservoir of essential minerals. But plans for the economic exploitation of Ukraine were flawed from the beginning and remained inconsistent throughout the war. Substantial reconstruction efforts only began belatedly and were accompanied by brute force that combined economic logic with ideological zeal. The Nazi policies of racist repression and mass murder were, then, both a means of and an obstacle to exploitation of the East. Yet, they were also successful: without the raw materials obtained from Ukraine, the Nazi war machine would have likely ground to a halt well before 1945. The cost of sustaining the German war effort was consequently borne, to a large extent, by the local population, which labored under appalling conditions both in the Reich and in Ukraine itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the attempts to reinforce capitalism within Germany during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials between 1945 and 1949. The author explains that the United Nations Organization was attempting to secure peace through stabilizing economic conditions and had set up an Economics and Social Committee. She discusses the relationship between National Socialism and capitalism, explores how the Nuremberg Trials addressed both political and corporate ideals, and examines the connection between Germany's Third Reich war crimes and its economics.

Business history has long prospered in its institutional niche while remaining on the outer rim of contemporary history. The recent boom in German business history, though, has shown that the insights gained from economic and business studies add significantly to our knowledge of twentieth century history. Beyond National Socialism, which has attracted the lion’s share of both attention and funding, the analysis of corporate protagonists sheds light on the complex interplay of state–business relations and the institutional continuities of Western economies. Case studies – among which the Flick Concern stands out as a cornerstone of recent research in business history – qualify the broad assumptions of the varieties-of-capitalism debate and suggest that familiar periodizations such as the Short Twentieth Century might need reconsideration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unlike other historiographic disciplines contemporary history has to define itself in a both intra- and interdisciplinary arena. While the debate on when exactly contemporary history begins has accompanied its practitioners from the very beginning, the question as to what sets it apart from other social sciences has long been suspended. With the fields of research moving rapidly into the last decades of the twentieth century this problem becomes increasingly urgent. Not only does contemporary history investigate the same empirical phenomena that have already been analysed by sociologists, economists, and political scientists, it also appropriates the theories constructed by these neighbouring disciplines. The present article exemplarily outlines this borrowing practice looking at the careers of theoretical models such as value change, international interdependence and economic structural change first in their own fields, then among historians. Beyond the easily identifiable hazards of using the data compiled by contemporary social scientists and reproducing their findings, the more fundamental problem lies in the all-too-easy adoption of the theories by which these have been produced. The heuristic and explanatory appeal of these theories results from their epistemic proximity to the hermeneutic horizon of contemporary historians and leads to the adoption rather than critical reflection of such models. This danger, however, also leads to the great potential of contemporary history which should historicise and look beyond the perspectives of contemporary social scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]