Morality and Memory: Reflections on Business Ethics and National Socialism

This article explores the self-understanding of West German business leaders in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust. It argues that business leaders were never silent about the Nazi years and, in fact, regularly addressed the implications of their own and their companies’ accommodations to Hitler. Rather than denying any connections to the Nazi economy, industrialists tried to cast their behaviour as highly moral. By providing for their workers, keeping their companies profitable, and adhering to traditions of quality German production, industrialists, according to post-war narratives, had behaved both pragmatically and ethically.