The argument here is that German industry and finance were preprogrammed to participate in the murder of the Jews by decisions made before the war that could not be reversed. Big business thus collaborated fully in the process, becoming “bagmen” and “fences” for stolen Jewish property and providers of goods and services to death camps.

This short summary chapter recalls the “arc of corruption” that the book depicts, the caricatures of German corporate behavior that the Nuremberg trials fostered, and their consequences for historical interpretation. The book concludes by recentering the consequences of business leaders’ actions, rather than the pragmatic motivations that produced these actions, in any judgment of their conduct.

This chapter explains why and how the Nazi regime created a mixed economy in which property remained private but profits were largely controlled by government policy. As Germany became a monopsony, an economy dominated by a single buyer, in this case the German state, large firms adapted their business to serving the state’s desires and demands, thus becoming agents and servants of them.

The era of enlightened absolutism in the eighteenth century was a moment that decisively shaped Berlin in all senses: topographically and architecturally; socially, both at the time and subsequently; and in the cultural imaginary, in terms of what we think of as ‘Berlin’ today. In the reigns of Frederick William I (1713–40), the ‘Soldier King’, and his son Frederick II (1740–86), ‘Frederick the Great’, Berlin was transformed from a small courtly city into a significant European capital, a garrison town in a powerful European state. The administrative system was developed and reformed, while military exploits abroad led to the growth of the composite state of Brandenburg-Prussia. Under Frederick II Berlin also became a centre of ‘enlightened absolutism’, in which intellectual pursuits, educational institutions, the arts, and culture were fostered. Religious toleration and social diversity were rooted in policies of fostering economic growth through welcoming productive immigrants. By the end of the century, Berlin’s population was growing, and its intellectual life thriving, but its military might was in decline.

When Britain accepted an IMF loan in 1976 few thought that it would usher in a new political economy that would endure to the present, so how did it?

The chapter argues that Germany’s major corporate leaders largely agreed between 1918 and 1932 on a self-serving analysis of Germany’s economic problems and an unpopular approach to dealing with them (the Consensus) but splintered and dithered in identifying an appropriate political vehicle for these views (the Dissensus). As a result, they neither defended the Republic nor brought Hitler to power.

How has Britain been transformed since the financial crisis of 2008?