Description: This book challenges the view that cheap purchases of Jewish firms were the result of the Nazi Party's activity in 1938 by emphasizing the role of private businessmen being supported by banks and the judiciary in 1933-1935.
Review Quotes: "William M. Katin's Hostile Takeovers offers a crucial addition to our understanding of the processes by which the 'Aryanization' of large Jewish businesses took place during Hitler's Third Reich. Whereas scholars have mainly focused on the 1936-1938 period as the interval during which such expropriations--directed from above by the party-state--had occurred, Katin instead locates the period during the early years of the regime, 1933-1935. He demonstrates that these were affected privately by nonpolitical actors, who covertly colluded with some of the country's largest banks, as they exploited the rising tide of anti-Semitism for purely personal gain. This study is an important work of revisionism that seriously alters the dimensions of a considerable historiography on a compelling and fraught historical issue." --Albion M. Urdank, University of California, Los Angeles