From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (review)

Over the past few years, many histories of German companies during the Third Reich have been published. They are a response to the attempts by survivors to obtain restitution from firms involved in the commission of crimes against humanity during that period. Peter Hayes's portrayal of one of the enterprises that was most deeply involved, Degussa, is among the best.

Hayes begins his work with a disclaimer that "this book is designed not as an all-embracing history of the firm under Nazism, but rather as a report on the most sensitive aspects of that history" (p. xvii). Within these parameters he succeeds admirably, providing the reader with a clear, detailed explanation of Degussa's relationship with the Nazi regime. In contrast, business and economic historians will be disappointed by the economic aspects of his work. Hayes relied overwhelmingly on the Degussa archive. In the interest of bringing his findings to readers in a timely manner, he intentionally did not attempt to obtain information from many other archives that might have had files relevant to his story.

The author gives a summary of the origins and development of Degussa up to the advent of the Nazi regime. He shows how the firm defined itself as a niche player that provided goods and services to other businesses. Degussa concentrated on refining precious metals, providing services to chemical companies, and producing selected inorganic chemicals. It was heavily involved in cartel activity both before 1933 and after. Hayes demonstrates how the company became implicated in the Nazi regime's policies of rearmament, autarky, and military aggression primarily to preserve its market position, to prepare itself for the postwar period, and to avoid friction with the Nazi overlords. Degussa's management was not filled with eliminationist anti-Semites. Essentially, it was indifferent to the moral implications of the regime's policies and did not care about the origins of the gold and silver that it was contracted to process.

Hayes contends that Degussa lost control of its fate by 1937. He points out that the company grew substantially, but in ways that its management did not approve. Managers feared that the firm was being committed to technologies that were obsolete and that it would be burdened by excess capacity after the conclusion of hostilities. The company used slave labor but only when no other option remained available. Involuntary labor was not a bonanza for the firm: "the enterprise did not 'save' large sums on the exploitation of the inmate laborers" (p. 269). Indeed, Degussa did not reap exceptionally high profits from any of its war-related work.

Hayes devotes considerable attention to Degesch, a subsidiary of Degussa. Degesch is of interest because it manufactured Zyklon-B, the compound used to murder Jews at Auschwitz and elsewhere. Hayes provides a detailed explanation of how Degesch was formed, how it came to be a part of Degussa, and how it dealt with the SS through intermediaries. Degesch did not reap super profits from its involvement in the Holocaust that it could transfer to the parent firm. As Hayes concludes, "Shocking as it is to say, the idea that Degussa made a fortune by providing the means to murder European Jews is fatuous" (p. 297).

The book suffers from two main flaws. Most important, the analyses of the accounts of both Degussa and Degesch are clouded by a loose use of accounting terms, most especially 'profit.' In addition, Hayes's attempts to place Degussa in economic context lack precision. He contends that the Nazis had created a "steered market economy" from 1933 (p. 15). Unfortunately, this is the same term that Alfred Müller-Armack used to describe his very different concept of the social market economy in 1946. In fact, the Nazi regime's attempts to control the economy were inept from the beginning, and with the introduction of wage and price controls in 1936, any semblance of a market...