The National Socialist Party and government were suspicious of banks and their power and took over many elements of older critiques of German banking. They distinguished between productive and speculative, grasping capitalism (“schaffendes” as opposed to “raffendes Kapital”). In the discussions about bank reform and restructuring that took place in the aftermath of the depression and the banking crisis, they favored public-sector banks, as a less “capitalistic” way of managing money and investment. There were already state-owned banks, such as the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft, and the Nazi state added more for particular investments in connection with the new military and economic priorities: notably the Bank der deutschen Luftfahrt, which was to finance air rearmament. In retail banking, the Nazis unambiguously favored the savings banks [Sparkassen], the banks of the little or average people.

The Nazi attitude toward privately owned joint-stock banks was heavily permeated by anti-Semitism. Banking and speculative financial capitalism were castigated as “Jewish,” and in a number of instances commercial banks were subject to party-organized anti – Semitic boycotts in 1933. Later, in 1938, there was a brief time when Deutsche Bank was, under official and legal terminology, a “nonaryan” bank. Explaining the character and origins of Nazi anti – Semitism is clearly an enterprise that goes well beyond the scope of this study. The movement had many facets or strands.