Nazi Looting

NAZI looting during World War II, though not unprecedented, broke all records when it came to quantity. Personally supervised by the Nazi leadership, a plethora of agencies stripped the citizens of the occupied nations of works of art, documents, books, real estate, and financial assets. Their operations were extremely complex and tailored to fit the racial status of each region. Thus, the depredations in the Slavic nations were far more drastic than those in Western Europe. But the national collections of Axis and occupied ‘Nordic’ nations were also liable to re-arrangements in favour of the Nazi homeland and any Jewish assets held in them were fair game. To legalise their looting to their own satisfaction, the Nazis, who were fully aware that they were violating the traditional rules of warfare, passed a vast array of laws, decrees and regulations, most ex-post facto, and all of surpassing cynicism. Most analyses of these efforts have tended to concentrate on one affected area. Art, real estate and equities are seldom considered together. But for most families these various assets were inescapably intertwined. Gerald Aalders has, in this well-researched and concise book, done us the great favour of describing these interlocking looting systems as they were instituted in the Netherlands, thereby illustrating more chillingly than ever before the thoroughness of the Nazi operations

Homeland · Looting · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Real estate · World War II · European history and politics · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law