This broadly conceived introduction discusses recent approaches to the history of capitalism in the United States and Germany and relates them to the findings of economic and business historians of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. It identifies four key tensions between the prominence of Kapitalismuskritik and the tacit spread of capitalist practices and attitudes; a focus on capitalism’s concentrated and organized character and the experience of its bewildering complexity; state intervention and the dynamics of the market; and a national framework of viewing the economy and capitalism’s transnational entanglements. The overarching argument is that Nazism became attractive not least for promising to resolve these tensions. It professed to transcend capitalism while harnessing its energies for a racist and imperialist agenda. These and other aspects are treated in the volume’s four sections on debating, concealing, promoting, and racializing German capitalism between 1918 and 1945.

Germany’s Sparkassen (public savings banks) were vital to the national economy during the Second World War. They also held a special place in the cultural fabric, as particularly representative of perceived German virtues – hard work, thrift, community – the appraisal of which was heightened during the Third Reich. However, we don’t know much about this sector. How did these “most völkisch” institutions operate during the Nazi era? In particular, how were National Socialism and capitalism intertwined in Sparkassen decision-making and self-representation? This chapter demonstrates that the logics of capitalism remained paramount in the minds of savings bank managers. However, their faith in capitalist principles did not make them any less useful to (or supportive of) the regime. Instead, it allowed bank leaders to rationalize their own behavior and legitimize their support for the dictatorship as good for business.

This chapter explores personal property and the desire for possessions as a dimension of private life in Nazi Germany. It examines the regime’s promotion of ‘German advertising’ as part of its drive against ‘Jewish’ business and asks how far, if at all, popular aspirations for consumer goods were accommodated within a dictatorship that was geared to a war economy at the expense of private consumption. It goes on to ask how far and with what arguments the regime in wartime encouraged private saving, and it shows that the promotional material used by savings banks often encouraged private saving using arguments – even in wartime – that focused less on patriotic duty than on personal dreams of material possessions. In promoting wartime saving, the regime thus in many respects continued its pre-war encouragement of private consumer aspirations, even if such aspirations were largely deferred.