News
Many of the profits accumulated from the liquidation of Jewish property were used directly to fund the costs of World War II, Dr. Goetz Aly argued yesterday.
Aly claimed at his speech that much of the media, scholarly and legal attention devoted to profits that banks made off the war is misplaced, since the lion's share of property confiscated from the Jews was funneled directly into Nazi war chests.
Overall, the funds raised from the confiscation of Jewish property "didn't come close to covering war costs, but they moderated peaks of expense and slowed inflation," Aly said.
Aly examined the financing of the war in several different occupied countries to support his case.
After the widespread confiscation of Jewish property in occupied Serbia, the Serbian government collected between 3 and 4 billion dinar, enough to cover the costs of occupation for approximately six months.
Money collected from the liquidation of Jewish assets also tended to reduce the inflationary pressures on the national currency of German-occupied countries, Aly said.
In Belgium, where the Germans collected 225,000 Reichmarks from the seizure of Jewish property, these funds covered occupation costs for two months.
At a meeting between Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Belgian officials held just before the issuing of a decree to nationalize all Jewish assets, the only issue they discussed was funding of the war, Aly said.
Germans liquidated Jewish assets in various ways.
