Foreign exchange protection command

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From 1938 onwards, German foreign exchange protection commandos were active in the Sudetenland , Austria and, during the Second World War, in Poland and the occupied western states to confiscate private foreign exchange, shares, gold and diamonds from private property that had been declared as notifiable. These commands were manned by officials from the customs investigation offices of the Reich Finance Administration and managed by the Foreign Exchange Investigation Office , which was affiliated with the Secret State Police Office under Reinhard Heydrich . Foreign exchange protection commandos partly participated in the deportation of Jews.

Activity in the east

As before with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, a foreign exchange ordinance was passed in the General Government on November 15, 1939, which was soon supplemented with an "Order on the protection of Jewish assets and anonymous assets ...". Thereafter, Jews had to concentrate their assets on a single account and were only allowed to accept cash or withdraw money to a limited extent. From the beginning of 1940, the foreign exchange protection commandos continued their work under a different name as a customs investigation office . They searched for unregistered values, searched lockers according to plan, created criminal charges and forwarded confiscated items to the general trustee for securing German cultural assets or the main trust agency east (HTO).

Activity in the west

In 1940 the foreign exchange protection commandos deployed in the occupied western countries were assigned to the respective military commanders in Paris and Brussels. This led the factual and disciplinary supervision. The central foreign exchange investigation office in Berlin was dissolved at the beginning of 1941 and the offices were subordinated to the Reich Finance Administration. Head of the "Department of Western Countries in the Foreign Exchange Search Office" was the customs officer, born in 1905 (initially customs inspector later government councilor) SS-Hauptsturmführer Herbert Staffeldt, who remained in a key position even after restructuring. Hermann Göring reserved the right to issue instructions to the foreign exchange protection command when the authority was dissolved. The officers of the Foreign Exchange Protection Command had police powers and had ID cards from the Secret Field Police (GFP) without being subordinate to them. They had search, interrogation and arrest skills and carried firearms. They did not wear CFP uniforms, but worked in civilian clothes.

During the German occupation, the possession of foreign currency, securities and Reichsbanknotes was forbidden in these countries. The commandos searched for them and indirectly fed them into the German war economy . In addition, property belonging to Jews and those who had emigrated to the regime was searched for and then confiscated. In particular, the foreign exchange protection command had the accounts of Jews blocked and thus deprived them of their livelihood.

In the Netherlands, foreign exchange protection commands raised gold and paper currencies worth 54.9 million Reichsmarks by September 1943 . The total loot (gold jewelry, precious metals, diamonds, securities, bank balances) until the withdrawal of the German troops is calculated at 368.4 million Reichsmarks. The “robbery bank” Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. Sarphatistraat was an essential instrument in the looting . In Belgium, up to September 1943, the total confiscated assets in the form of gold and paper currencies were worth 46.7 million Reichsmarks. In addition, officers of the foreign exchange protection commandos regularly took part in raids to arrest Jews in hiding in Belgium.

In France, the foreign exchange protection command blocked access to gold and foreign exchange holdings, but was unable to obtain a general obligation to offer and sell under the Vichy regime . The German customs officials only officially got access to the property of Jews who were not French citizens until the end of 1942; however, there were special actions beforehand such as the confiscation of Rothschild’s property. The total volume of the values, some of which were transferred without a formal legal basis and against the resistance of the French government, amounts to 341.3 million Reichsmarks.

The foreign exchange protection commandos were only responsible for collecting the assets. The distribution of monetary values ​​was the responsibility of politics. Hermann Göring reserved the decision on the use of confiscated works of art. He announced this on November 5 in an order to the military commander in Paris and the other authorities in the occupied countries.

Control from mid-1941

The Foreign Exchange Search Office was dissolved on May 26, 1941. Although the Reich Ministry of Finance became responsible beyond the previous personnel law competencies, according to Ralf Banken, "the foreign exchange business group of the four-year planning authority remained the actual control center for the commandos." the commands hardly hindered.

literature

  • Hanns Christian Löhr: The Iron Collector. The Hermann Göring collection. Art and Corruption in the “Third Reich” . Mann, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-7861-2601-0 .
  • Ralf Banken: You can only take action against this with a free search - The work of the German foreign exchange protection commandos 1938 to 1944. In: Hartmut Berghoff, Jürgen Kocka , Dieter Ziegler (eds.): Economy in the age of extremes. Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60156-9 , pp. 377-393.

Web links

  • Katrin-Isabel Krähling, The Foreign Exchange Protection Command Belgium, 1940-1944 , 2005 University Library of Konstanz

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralf Banken: You can only take action against this with a free search - The work of the German foreign exchange protection commandos 1938 to 1944 . In: Hartmut Berghoff, Jürgen Kocka, Dieter Ziegler (eds.): Economy in the age of extremes. Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60156-9 , pp. 377-393.
  2. ↑ Ralf Banken: You can only take action against this with a free search ..., p. 378.
  3. ↑ Insa Meinen: The deportation of the Jews from Belgium and the German foreign exchange protection command. In: Johannes Hürter ; Jürgen Zarusky (Ed.): Occupation, Collaboration, Holocaust - New Studies on the Persecution and Murder of European Jews. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58728-9 , p. 64.
  4. ↑ Document VEJ in 4/40: The persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 (source book), Volume 4: Poland - September 1939-July 1941. (Edit by Klaus-Peter Friedrich.), Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , pp. 141/142.
  5. ↑ Insa Meinen, The deportation of Jews from Belgium and the foreign exchange protection command. In: Johannes Hürter (Ed.): Occupation, Collaboration, Holocaust. New Studies on the Persecution and Murder of European Jews . (Series of Quarterly Books for Contemporary History 97), Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-486-58728-5 .
  6. ↑ Ralf Banken: You can only take action against this with a free search ..., p. 388.
  7. ↑ Ralf Banken: You can only take action against this with a free search ..., p. 386.
  8. ↑ Ralf Banken: You can only take action against this with a free search ..., p. 390.
  9. ↑ Ernst Piper: Der Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg , in: Inka Bertz, Michael Dorrmann (ed.): Looted art and restitution. Jewish property from 1933 to the present day. Published on behalf of the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt a. M. 2008, p. 116, ISBN 978-3-8353-0361-4 . This arrangement is printed by Günther Haase: s. Art theft and art protection. A documentation . Olms, Hildesheim 1991, ISBN 3-487-09539-4 in the document part - on the non-paginated page 321ff
  10. ↑ Ralf Banken: You can only take action against this with a free search ..., p. 391.