“Export or Die”; Foreign Trade in the Third Reich

In recent years, a substantial number of publications has enriched our understanding of the economic history of the Third Reich. In particular the history of German companies during the 1930s and 1940s has been examined in much greater detail. Major companies (among others VW, Allianz, Deutsche Bank, Bertelsmann) have opened up their archives to historians — not for the production of self‐glorifying company histories, but for critical analyses of the experience, attitude and policies of the particular company in the Third Reich. It is now possible to draw more detailed and clearer conclusions on the relationship between the Nazi regime and the business community than only twenty years ago. As part of a wider research project on “Foreign Trade in the Third Reich” I draw upon these recent research outcomes and earlier publications, along with my own research on a particularly important sector of the German economy, engineering, to provide an outline analysis of three significant areas: The economic views and policies of leading members of the Nazi regime in general and towards Germany's industrial export sector in particular, the experience (relations to regime, policies, responses) of German companies in the Third Reich in general and of exporters of manufactured products in particular, and, as a case study, the experience of producers and exporters of machinery.