Book contents
- Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany
- Publications of the German Historical Institute
- Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Historicizing Capitalism in Germany, 1918–1945
- Part I Debating Capitalism
- Part II Concealing Capitalism
- 4 Capitalism, Wealth, and the Question of (In)Visibility
- 5 Semantics of Success
- 6 Hamburg Coffee Importers
- Part III Promoting Capitalism
- Part IV Racializing Capitalism
- Index
5 - Semantics of Success
The Cases of Friedrich Flick and Henry J. Kaiser
from Part II - Concealing Capitalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2022
- Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany
- Publications of the German Historical Institute
- Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Historicizing Capitalism in Germany, 1918–1945
- Part I Debating Capitalism
- Part II Concealing Capitalism
- 4 Capitalism, Wealth, and the Question of (In)Visibility
- 5 Semantics of Success
- 6 Hamburg Coffee Importers
- Part III Promoting Capitalism
- Part IV Racializing Capitalism
- Index
Summary
This chapter looks at two entrepreneurs who were particularly successful: Henry J. Kaiser in New Deal America and during World War II, and Friedrich Flick in National Socialist Germany. It reconstructs the public image constructed by the two men and their respective organizations. Although the two political systems were fundamentally different, Kaiser and Flick took both advantage of the opportunities for expansion that arose from the political struggle against the Great Depression and the preparation for war. Their “semantics of success” played down the extent of their economic power and distracted from profit opportunities offered by government politics. Instead, they highlighted anachronistic forms of a personal entrepreneurship that missed the practice in an age of bureaucratic capitalism.
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- Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany , pp. 136 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022