Vol. 20 · No. 3 · Issue 64 · Fall 2002

Gerald D. Feldman

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Abstract

Christopher Simpson, ed., War Crimes of the Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank. Office of Military Government (U.S.) Reports (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 2001)

There is a real question as to whether this book should be dignified with a review, or be used by scholars since one cannot even consider it a point of departure for a modern understanding of the subject, and it lacks a satisfactory scholarly apparatus to assist them in further research. Simpson's introduction, which I suspect lies at the heart of his minimal editorial effort, is ill-informed, tendentious, and often simply deceptive. If I have nevertheless decided to write this review, it is because I think it important to make some comment for the record. I also hope it might serve as an antidote for persons inclined to accept such works at face value because it might be seen as a confirmation of preconceived notions and prejudices that are widespread with respect to corporations and National Socialism. Most of these are negative, and justifiably so, but the goal of historical scholarship is to produce informed judgements based on replicable and reliable data presented in a well-grounded context. Simpson, as shall be shown, deplores such contextualization, which he thinks nothing more than "spin-doctoring" for the corporations involved and which he apparently finds inferior to the "spin" given by postwar investigators writing in 1946. All this would be quite silly and not worth bothering about were it not for the fact that, in the process of his assault on contextualization, he attacks the essence of the historical enterprise itself.