THE EXTENT AND LIMITS OF NAZIFICATION AT ALLIANZ

the allianz concern fared quite well during the years before the Second World War. The new regime did create certain novel difficulties and demands, and these intensified once the Four-Year Plan for German rearmament was launched in late 1936 and the radicalization of its domestic and foreign policies accelerated. Nevertheless, the necessary adaptations were made with reasonable success. It is useful to remember that the German business community — thanks to war, revolution, inflation, and depression — had ceased to have the experience of engaging in “normal” business activity for a sustained period of time since 1914 and had reached the point where even the appearance of normality was welcome. The Nazi regime had the advantage over its predecessors of being able to stamp out the old rebelliousness of the businessmen through its dictatorial practices. Some of the atmosphere of these years was captured trenchantly in 1936 by a well-known and well-connected Jewish industrialist who had fled to Turkey and there encountered some of the major German industrial leaders with whom he had worked over the years: “The industrial and personal manner of operating of all these gentlemen has hardly changed from what it was before. One hardly speaks of politics, and one always has the feeling that they also actually do not know anything and also do not at all want to know anything.”