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While German business's complicity in Nazi-era crimes from "Aryanization" to forced labor and mass murder has been well documented by historical research, corporate expansion into occupied Europe has received much less attention. Beyond plundering and labor recruitment we still know little about what German companies actually did abroad and whether it mattered to the actual war effort. The present article follows several electrical and construction companies, among them Siemens, AEG, and Philipp Holzmann, to wartime Ukraine, the most important arena of German economic exploitation in Eastern Europe. It traces their role within the occupation regime, their crucial contribution to the war, and their own goals in the process. Through a detailed examination of the giant, world-renowned hydroelectric power plant DniproGES (Dneprostoi), we argue that private business both literally and metaphorically powered German conquest, occupation, and the continuing war effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting out from the question of how history and law relate to each other, the article traces the influence of historical interpretations in the making of the Nuremberg Trials, taking these as examples for transitional trials more generally. In trying to explain Germany's apparently aberrant historical evolution, special-path explanations forged by historians gained in prominence after 1933. Several schools of historical thought proved particularly influential, among them the Namierites in Britain, the Andler-Vermeil school of Pangermanism in France, and the so-called Kehrites who emigrated from Germany to the US. These ideas then traveled to Nuremberg where they informed the prosecutors' understanding of German history, leaving a discernible impact on the trials' design and dynamics. In Nuremberg's aftermath, these trial narratives would come to inform influential strands in postwar historiography, with the special path both enjoying popularity and inviting heavy criticism to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This article reviews recent historical investigations of transitional trials held after the Second World War. It identifies three main strands of historiography. One group of studies has been dominated by the trials' participants who have shaped the perception of the trials' scope, their achievements, and their shortcomings, and pursued political, legal, or biographical agendas. A second group has treated the trials as a mere epilogue to the history of the deceased regimes. A third, more profound approach has conceptualized the trials as places where collective memory was assembled, configured, and shaped. This notion opens the debate to an analysis of how law and history on the one hand, jurisdiction, jurisprudence, and historiography on the other interact and how they impact on one another. The article compares and evaluates the benefits drawn from this research. It finds that historical analyses which take seriously the epistemological premises of the law as well as the courtroom's performativity manage to bypass well-trodden paths of interpretation which either deplore the limited, inadequate punishment meted out, or celebrate the triumphant march from Nuremberg to The Hague. The article concludes that such interdisciplinary readings help to avoid widespread disillusionment with the results of transitional trials. [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]