Dresdner faces hard truths about its wartime past

When Dresdner Bank published its 125th-anniversary history in 1997, it dedicated only one line to the bank's role during World War II. Last month, after seven years of research, Dresdner finally owned up to its past in a more thorough fashion, releasing a four-volume independent study detailing its activities during the Nazi era. The commissioned report, prepared by a group of academics at Ruhr University Bochum, documents Dresdner's financing of Huta Hoch- und Tiefbau, the construction company that built four crematoriums in Auschwitz as well as other camp structures. Dresdner, the research shows, was also the de facto house bank of the Nazis' SS paramilitary unit and had close connections to IG Farben, the company that produced lethal gas for Hitler's camps.

德累斯顿董事会成员伍尔夫·迈耶在一份声明中说：“我们接受这些事实，即使它们造成伤害。”。“通过对过去的全面研究，银行接受了对其业务的道德责任。”

In 1999, Deutsche Bank published an account of its Nazi-era history. Commerzbank is expected to release a similar study next year.

亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者与鲁尔大学历史教授迪特尔·齐格勒（Dieter Ziegler）进行了交谈，齐格勒帮助德累斯顿大学准备了这项研究。

Institutional Investor: Were you surprised by any of the findings?

Ziegler: We didn't know about Huta. We only found out about it in the final stage of research. But, of course, when you step back and think about it, you realize somebody must have ordered these concentration camps to be built, somebody must have built them, somebody must have financed them. That moment when you first see the files is shocking.

在这项研究中，纳粹政府和德累斯顿银行之间的关系被描述为“共生关系”我们能对纳粹政权和其他德国银行说同样的话吗？

Because Dresdner was owned by the government between 1931 and 1937, it was easy to Nazify the bank. With active Nazis on board, it was easier to create a business logic that was closer to Nazi ideology. Dresdner also had very close ties to the SS, something Deutsche did not have, and that gave them business opportunities other banks didn't have. Dresdner had Karl Rasche, a very talented banker and a Nazi. Emil Meyer was not such a talented banker, but he was even more of a Nazi than Rasche. These two were very active, and they had the most influence on the bank, along with Carl Goetz, chairman of the supervisory board.

德累斯顿通过廉价收购犹太人拥有的银行和工业公司，在12个城市获得了子公司。这令人惊讶吗？

What was most astonishing was how institutionalized it became. After Dresdner took over a bank in Sudetenland [now part of the Czech Republic], they negotiated with the Economics minister about receiving compensation for unsecured credit. The Reich agreed and proposed that they be paid from Jewish securities. Remember, in 1938, Jews had to pay "damages" for unspecified "sins" against society. It was a gigantic fee of 1 billion reich marks. Officially, it was known as the Jewish assets tax.

They often paid the fee from their savings or with their stocks and bonds. These securities normally went to the Prussian securities bank, which valued them and sent them to the Finance Ministry. In Sudetenland, Dresdner didn't have to give the securities to the Prussian Bank. They were allowed to keep them and book the profit as payment for taking over businesses in Sudetenland.

We assumed that no postwar reparations were paid out [in that case] because the securities never landed in the government administration. But we discovered that the families of the former owners were indeed paid postwar damages, because judges in the 1960s couldn't imagine that the shareholdings would have landed anywhere else than the Finance Ministry. Of course, now we know that they landed at Dresdner Bank.

Karl Rasche was convicted of war crimes in Nuremberg and spent seven years in prison. Why was he singled out?

迈耶自杀了。戈茨在一个集中营里被拘留了大约六个月。他担心自己也会受审。其他银行家直到1947年才知道他们是否必须出庭。只有在冷战开始后，他们才知道只有拉什会受到审判。在那一点上，他们努力把他列为替罪羊。拉什试图表明，是银行家群体做出了这些决定。

What happened to Goetz?

Because of the cold war, the Americans were no longer interested in putting too many German industrialists and bankers in jail. They needed an economy that functioned. For that reason, Goetz, who was more careful in his private dealings than Rasche, became the strong man at the bank in the late 1940s and stayed there until the 1960s.

What lessons can banks or companies learn from this exercise?

Every businessman, every company, should have a set of ethical rules which should be adhered to all the time. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, you should never compromise those rules. If someone even breaks these rules once, the spiral down to barbarism can't be stopped.