Part of the German Historical Institute's series of publications, this edited book examines the relationship of business enterprises and their managements to politics in Germany and Austria during the first half of the “Age of Extremes,” a term borrowed from Eric Hobsbawm to describe the twentieth century. The twelve essays are particularly focused on exploring how businesses shaped and adjusted to new political realities during this period, how new political and social conditions impacted the business environment, and to what extent the business community contributed to the rise of the Nazi state and aided in carrying out the Holocaust. The book was put together as a tribute to Gerald D. Feldman and the individual chapters reflect his historiographical influence in economic, social, and business history, both in a methodological and topical sense. As the introduction explains, Feldman eschewed any strict theoretical framework as the basis of his scholarship and pursued a path of what is described as “critical empiricism” (p. 4). Drawing upon original archival research and the most recent published works, a number of the essays emphasize the influence that individuals had on economics and politics as opposed to tracing the impact of abstract social forces. Overall, the book is organized into two parts: the first set of essays deal with the tumultuous period from the late Wilhelmine era through the early 1930s, while the second set explores the business community's relationship to the Nazi regime.

Part I starts with two essays that explore the impact of rapidly changing politics on businesses during the late Imperial and early Weimar periods and how well executives adapted to new social and political circumstances. Gerhard Ritter writes on the relationship of Albert Ballin, the Jewish head executive of the HAPAG Shipping Company, with Kaiser Wilhelm I and his government. In the essay Ritter effectively highlights the extent to which the international shipping business was influenced by political meddling since it was seen as strategically significant by powerful nations at the time. Ballin committed suicide as revolution spread in Germany in November 1918. Werner Plumpe's essay relates a much different reaction by a business executive. He shows how the Rhineland industrialist Carl Duisberg grudgingly recognized the social and political realities of the early Weimar Republic and ultimately came to the conclusion that industrialists must learn to cooperate with the unions and Social Democrats in order to protect their larger economic interests, foreshadowing a social contract that would be developed more fully in the Federal Republic. Within the financial realm, Phillip Cottrell's, Peter Eigner's, and Harold James's essays explore the structural weaknesses of the banking sector, along with managerial failures, within both postwar Germany and Austria that helped to lead to the international financial crisis of 1931. The failure of managerial leadership in the financial sector is an issue pursued by Jeffrey Fear and R. Daniel Wadhwani, who show that savings banks in Germany learned to thrive in the first part of the twentieth century and effectively lobbied for their interests, while in the United States they a suffered a long decline from the early twentieth century through the Great Depression.

The chapters in Part II of the book entitled “National Socialism, War, and the Holocaust” fit a bit more tightly together than the chapters in Part I. They all highlight the extent to which businesses and individuals possessed agency and room for decision making within the Third Reich and underscore the importance of incentives, self-interest, and profit over compulsion as a motivating force. Dieter Ziegler's “‘A Regulated Market Economy’: New Perspectives on the Nature of the Economic Order of the Third Reich, 1933–1939” argues that profit motive and market forces remained central to the Nazi economy even with the increased Nazi intervention into the economy. Ziegler provides an interesting case, but perhaps underplays the degree that coercion from the Nazi state influenced business decision making and might have had a different conclusion had he extended the study through the war years. Johannes Bähr makes a revealing comparison of the two iron and steel magnates Paul Reusch and Friedrich Flick and shows that their attitudes and relations toward Nazi involvement in the economy were quite different, illustrating that there was more room for maneuver within the Nazi society than one might realize. Despite these differences in views, as they pursued profit, both ultimately lent their leadership and talents to building the economy and arming a criminal regime. Reinhard Rürup and Ingo Köhler pick up on this theme of individual agency in their respective essays by exploring how scientists and their institutions quickly adapted themselves to Nazi goals and how business leaders, with encouragement from the authorities, increasingly took economic advantage of Jews selling out their businesses in the process of the Aryanization of the economy, a process that all the while maintained a veneer of standard legal procedure. Constantin Goschler Europeanizes this issue by sketching a pattern of the dynamics in which local populations dispossessed the Jews, thereby pointing to areas for further fruitful research. Using previously unexamined archival material, Heidrun Homburg's essay examines how administrators of enemy assets in France attempted to protect the interests of the firms they oversaw, but the economic interests of the Reich invariably prevailed.

The collection concludes with a thoughtful and fitting tribute to Feldman along with the bibliography of his extensive publications. Originally given by Jürgen Kocka at a symposium in Berlin in October 2008, the tribute elegantly captures Feldman's extensive scholarly and personal contributions and makes note of the more controversial positions that Feldman took during his long and distinguished career. Overall, this outstanding work is of particular interest to specialists in the field of business and economic history and points to promising new paths of research in the field. A number of the essays are unfortunately marred with typographical errors. Nevertheless, this collection of well-researched and provocative essays is a fine tribute to Gerald D. Feldman.