Antitrust cleanup

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The cartel settlement was a reorganization of the economic management apparatus in the outgoing Nazi state . The measures were based on a decree issued by the Reich Minister of Economics on May 20, 1943 and dragged on until 1944. Large numbers of private cartels that were no longer needed were dissolved.

prehistory

“The coexistence of older, traditional cartels and new, up-and-coming steering associations ” had resulted in “a redundant double structure” in the German economy up to the beginning of the 1940s. The trigger for the project to clean up cartels was criticism within the state management that the traditional private cartels had meanwhile become superfluous; often - because they are effectively inoperative - they have sunk to pure “letterhead cartels”. In-depth consultations up to the spring of 1943 resulted in "the result that nothing stands in the way of the dissolution of the vast majority of the associations."

activities

The decree of the Reich Economics Minister of May 20, 1943 ultimately led to the dissolution of around 90% of all German cartels. This measure was justified with the will to give the "market-regulating associations", the private-sector cartels, "no more space". Only the following types of facilities were excluded from this procedure:

  • Cartels that had "special technical knowledge",
  • "International cartels" and
  • “ Syndicates ”, that is, cartels with a special distribution system.

The aim of these measures

  1. to achieve a "clear organizational structure of the German war economy",
  2. to create a "means of rationalization" of their management structures and
  3. to establish an important “prerequisite for a future peace building of the market order”.

Due to the steps taken, "the cartel apparatus itself [...] was dissolved to 90% [...]." According to an official statement from the end of 1943, "over 90 per cent of the cartels [...] were dissolved or were in a process of dissolution". Cartel expert Max Metzner later assessed the effectiveness of the reform somewhat less: only around 1,800 to 1,900 of the 2,500 previously existing German cartels would have been dissolved by the end of the war in 1945.

Reception and interpretation

The German cartel purge of 1943 was largely ignored or misunderstood by politics and contemporary history after 1945:

  • The measures were primarily motivated by propaganda and not planned as sustainable (Metzner).
  • The measures were merely optimization steps within a closed cartel system (Neumann). A clash with planned economy principles was not seen.
  • In more recent historical studies, the antitrust cleanup has either not been mentioned or has only been mentioned briefly and in passing. The subject was previously not considered to be of any importance.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013, p. 226.
  2. ↑ Der deutsche Volkswirt, 17 (1942/43), No. 29/30, 1943, p. 857.
  3. ^ Antitrust cleanup. Decree of May 20, 1943, in: Ministerialblatt des Reichswirtschaftsministerium 43 (1943), No. 18, pp. 541–542, here p. 542.
  4. ^ Antitrust cleanup. Decree, p. 541.
  5. ↑ Thea Wippermann, Fate and Change of Cartel Functions in the Controlled Economy, Diss. Univ. Jena 1944, p. 110.
  6. ↑ Wippermann, Schicksal, p. 107.
  7. ^ Wippermann, Schicksal, p. 91.
  8. ^ Philip C. Newman, Key German Cartels under the Nazi Regime, in: The Quarterly Journal of Economics 62 (1948), No. 4, pp. 576-595, p. 577.
  9. ^ Max Metzner, Die Kartellpolitik in Deutschland, in: Jahn, Georg / Junckerstorff, Kurt (ed.), Internationales Handbuch der Kartellpolitik, Berlin 1958, pp. 89–155, here p. 115.
  10. ↑ Metzner, Kartellpolitik, p. 231.
  11. ^ Franz L. Neumann, Behemoth. Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933–1944, Cologne 1977 [= Behemoth. The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933-1944, Toronto 1944 resp. New York 1963], p. 629.
  12. ↑ Leonhardt, Kartellheorie, pp. 294–303

literature

  • Antitrust cleanup . Decree of May 20, 1943, in: Ministerialblatt des Reichswirtschaftsministerium, 43 (1943), No. 18, pp. 541–542.
  • Thea Wippermann, Fate and Change of Cartel Functions in the Managed Economy , Diss. Univ. Jena 1944.
  • Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013.