Multinational enterprise, 'corporate responsibility' and the Nazi dictatorship: The case of Unilever and Germany in the 1930s

Contemporary European History

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 149-167

  Forbes, Neil ^a,b  

^a Department of School International Studies and Social Science ^*

^b Institute for Clean Growth and Future Mobility   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949846278     PISSN: 09607773     EISSN: 14692171     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0960777307003761     Document Type: Review

References (39)

1. For a discussion of this issue see Christopher Kobrak, Per Hansen and Christopher Kopper, 'Business, Political Risk, and Historians in the Twentieth Century', in Christopher Kobrak and Per Hansen, eds., European Business, Dictatorship, and Political Risk, 1920-1945 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 10-21
2. For an outstanding analysis of the issues surrounding business-state relations, see Christoph Buchheim and Jonas Scherner, 'The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry', Journal of Economic History, 66 (June 2006), 2
3. Recent corporate histories include: Gerald D. Feldman, Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
4. Werner Abelshauser,Wolfgang von Hippel, Jeffrey Allan Johnson and Raymond G. Stokes, German Industry and Global Enterprise. BASF: The History of a Company (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
5. Harold James, The Nazi Dictatorship and the Deutsche Bank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
6. Peter Hayes, From Co-operation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
7. See Werner Abelshauer, Jans-Otmar Hesse and Werner Plumpe, eds., Wirtschaftordnung, Staat und Unternehmen: Neue Forschungen zur Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Nationalsozialismus (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2003)
8. Richard J. Overy, 'German business and the Nazi New Order', in Terry Gourvish, ed., Business and Politics in Europe, 1900-1970: Essays in Honour of Alice Teichova (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 177-9
9. Simon Reich, The Fruits of Fascism: Postwar Prosperity in Historical Perspective (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990)
10. Buchheim and Scherner, 'Private Property in the Nazi Economy', 401
11. A case can be made that survival is the ultimate mark of success; see, for example, Youssef Cassis, Big Business: The European Experience in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 102
12. Charles Wilson, The History of Unilever: A study in Economic Growth and Social Change, Vols. I and II (London: Cassell, 1954)
13. Gerald D. Feldman, 'Foreign Penetration of German Enterprises after the First World War: The Problem of Ü berfremdung', in Alice Teichova, Maurice Lévy-Leboyer and Helga Nussbaum, eds., Historical Studies in International Corporate Business (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989), 97
14. For an authoritative statement of this point see MiraWilkins, 'Multinationals and Dictatorship: Europe in the 1930s and 1940s', in Kobrak and Hansen, European Business, 22-38
15. Lukas Straumann and Daniel Wildmann, Schweitzer Chemieunternehmen im 'Dritten Reich': Herausgegeben von der Unabhängigen Expertenkommission Schweiz - Zweiter Weltkrieg, Band 7 (Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 2001)
16. Henry Ashby Turner, General Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle for Control of Opel, Europe's Biggest Carmaker (London: Yale University Press, 2005)
17. Jörg Später, Vansittart: Britische Debatten über Deutsche und Nazis 1902-1945 (Göttingen:Wallstein Verlag 2003), 15. The author observes that national stereotypes that pretend to explain 'the other' may, first and foremost, allow insights into the prejudices and collective mentalities that help to define 'the self'
18. For an analysis of this phenomenon see Patricia Clavin, 'Defining Transnationalism', Contemporary European History, 14, 4 (2005), 421-39
19. B. R. Tomlinson, 'Continuities and Discontinuities in Indo-British Economic Relations: British Multinational Corporations in India, 1920-1970' inWolfgang J.Mommsen and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Imperialism and After: Continuities and Discontinuities (London: German Historical Institute and Allen & Unwin, 1986), 156
20. For a commentary on this see Christopher Kobrak, National Cultures and International Competition: The Experience of Schering AG, 1851-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 250
21. UARM, minutes of Special Committee with Continental Committee, G18, 7 March 1932, 'German Currency Matters'
22. UARM, SD, 75, 'Currency Positions in Central Europe - Germany', J de Blank, 3 March 1932
23. UARM, minutes of Special Committee with Continental Committee, G30, 19 July 1932, 'National Socialist Party'
24. Straumann and Wildmann, Schweizer Chemieunternehmen, 64
25. Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology: IG Farben in the Nazi Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 90-1
26. For details see Wubs, 'Unilever between Reich and Empire', 53
27. Rainer Karlsch and Raymond G. Stokes, 'Faktor Ö l': Die Mineralölwirtschaft in Deutschland 1859-1974 (München, C.H. Beck, 2003), 161-2
28. Kobrak, National Cultures and International Competition, 267
29. Robert Bickers, Britain in China: Community, Culture and Colonialism 1900-1949 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 170
30. Frans-Paul van der Putten, Corporate Behaviour and Political Risk: Dutch Companies in China 1903-1941 (Leiden: Leiden University, CNWS Publications, 2001), 148
31. Simon Reich, 'Ford's Research Efforts in Assessing the Activities of its Subsidiary in Nazi Germany', Ford Motor Company Archives, Simon Reich Commentary, 2001, available at http://media.ford.com
32. Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (London: BCA, 1991), 489
33. For the campaign against Beiersdorf see Frank Bajohr, 'Aryanisation' in Hamburg: the Economic Exclusion of Jews and the Confiscation of their Property in Nazi Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002), 22-6
34. James, Deutsche Bank, 82
35. Hayes, Degussa, 75
36. UARM, SD 3254, Treasury Schedule, 5 Oct. 1938. The specification of transfers includes an item for Rm 0.5 million for Tellmann
37. Dieter Ziegler, Harald Wixforth and Jörg Osterloh, '"Aryanisation" in Central Europe, 1933-1939: A Preliminary Account for Germany (the 'Altreich'), Austria and the "Sudenten" Area', in Gourvish, Business and Politics, 192-3
38. UARM, SD 3500, 'German Forecast 1939', cash flow statement, 1 March 1939
39. Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The pathological Pursuit of Power (London: Constable, 2005)