With chase national bank assistance, the Nazi government earned dollars in the United States through the sale of special German marks—known as Ruckwanderer (“returnee”) marks—to U.S. residents of German descent. The currency scheme began in the late 1930s and lasted until the June 1941 executive order freezing German assets. Newly declassified FBI records offer a far more detailed picture of how and why the Nazi regime gave Germans abroad generous terms to move back to Germany and how they financed these subsidies through seized Jewish assets.

The Development of the Rückwanderer Mark Scheme

After Hitler came to power and began to re-arm, Germany continued to import large quantities of American goods. In 1939 alone, for example, Germany imported 197 million Reichsmarks worth of American foodstuffs, raw materials, and finished goods (including lead, copper, aluminum, and oil) while exporting RM 125 million worth of goods to the United States. It needed dollars to finance its trade deficit. The Reich Ministry of Economics (RWM) under Hjalmar Schacht experimented with several ways to acquire dollars through its subsidiary office, the Reich Office for Foreign Exchange Control, created in December 1933 and led by Dr. Hans Hartenstein. A sure method of raising dollars lay in selling marks to Germans who wished to return to Germany temporarily or permanently, or to Germans living abroad who simply wished to purchase goods there.

The problem lay in fair compensation in marks for Germans who wished to exchange dollars.