If one looks at the Nazi takeover of all aspects of German society, the Aryanization of the German

economy should not easily be overlooked. Due to the vast influence Jewish civilians had in all aspects of
Europeans and German societies, agendas behind the Aryanization were causing vast differences to the
Fuhrers agenda. Initially, the Nazis gradually built their following along the Artisans, farmers, self-
employed, peasant proprietors, and professionals in Germany with heavy influence of propaganda 1. The
Jews held positions in society where they were notably recognized as conspicuous competitors in the
economy or middlemen in areas like wholesale or retail trade, scrap metal business, milling and livestock
dealing in rural areas, textiles, and free professions like law and medicine 2. With vast indifferences of the
germane people and the sophisticated Jews position in the economy, we now can see how resentful the
Nazis came to be towards this population but also why the Jews were viewed as a threat with
Xenophobic attitudes. There were “approximately 100,000 Jewish owned economic operations in
Germany at the time Hitler took power”3.

With the agendas of Aryanization, German big businesses seem to have had very little interest in the
agendas of the Third Reich. Additionally, the agenda and message Aryanization was portraying was the
“corrupting Jewish influences in culture rather than economic life” 4. Furthermore, viewed as bigots of
the country club standard, the Nazis tried to impose its standards of treatment towards the Jews and
the German big businessmen opposed. Not only because of the disruption of the economic system but
because “most corporate barons had served with Jews in the war, rubbed elbows with them in
professional life, found them loyal and cooperative in cartels and interests groups, had first or second
hand experience with intermarriage, and generally had come to recognize the absurdity of group
vilification”5. With such mindsets, we see how the Nazi party does recognize the major businesses but
views them as snotty rich men and not as true hard-working Germans like their patrons in the fields.
These German big businessmen viewed the Nazis as racists imposing on the flow for business with their
discrimination but “did not impose the general practice” 6.

Opposition by the businessmen took on the racial persecution straight on the Fuhrer. One can observe
how the status in society these businessmen held allowed for direct confrontation to the Fuhrer and
higher up Nazi officials. Such observations by Peter Hayes can affirm the attitudes businessmen such as
these people created the German economy therefore carried the nation on their backs. The Nazis
“numerus clausus or quotas system imposed an impermissible assault on their current livelihood and
status”7. These men drew the line between acceptable restrictions of the activities of the Jews. They
used their own judgement to call for derogatory stereotypes between low income immigrant Jews and
educated native-born Jews as German as everyone else. The arguments were challenged as to why the
treatment of the Jews in their business’s should be

1
Joseph R. Mitchell, Holocaust: Readings and Interpretations (New York: Dushkin/McGraw Hill, 2001), 158.
2
Mitchell, Holocaust, 158.
3
Mitchell, Holocaust, 158.
4
Mitchell, Holocaust, 159.
5
Mitchell, Holocaust, 159.
6
Mitchell, Holocaust, 159.
7
Mitchell, Holocaust, 159.