Examining the role of the Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest commercial bank, in the Nazi dictatorship, Harold James asks how the bank accommodated itself to a transition from democracy and a market economy to dictatorship and a planned economy. How did the new Zeitgeist influence the bank? What opportunities for profit did it see in the National Socialist route out of the Great Depression? What role did anti-Semitism play in the bank's business relations and its dealing with employees? How was the bank connected to Auschwitz?

The essays in this book examine the long history of the international financial system in terms of the current debate about globalization and its limits. In the nineteenth century, international markets existed without international institutions. In the interwar years, attempts (largely unsuccessful) at designing a genuine international trade and monetary system were made at the same time (coincidentally) that the system collapsed. In the post-1945 era, the intended design effort was infinitely more successful. The development of large international capital markets since the 1960s, however,...