William M. Katin, PhD, is lecturer at the California State University, San Bernardino.

William M. Katin’s Hostile Takeovers offers a crucial addition to our understanding of the processes by which the ‘Aryanization’ of large Jewish businesses took place during Hitler’s Third Reich. Whereas scholars have mainly focused on the 1936–1938 period as the interval during which such expropriations—directed from above by the party-state—had occurred, Katin instead locates the period during the early years of the regime, 1933–1935. He demonstrates that these were affected privately by nonpolitical actors, who covertly colluded with some of the country’s largest banks, as they exploited the rising tide of anti-Semitism for purely personal gain. This study is an important work of revisionism that seriously alters the dimensions of a considerable historiography on a compelling and fraught historical issue.

• Chapter One: How Cheap Purchases of German-Jewish Firms OccurredChapter Two: History of Research on Cheap Purchases of Jewish FirmsChapter Three: New Approach to Comprehend AryanizersChapter Four: Background to Aryanization of the Hermann Tietz ChainChapter Five: Aryanization of Hermann TietzChapter Six: Early Aryanizations Confirming the Hermann Tietz ParadigmChapter Seven: Conclusion

William M. Katin, PhD, is lecturer at the California State University, San Bernardino.

William M. Katin’s Hostile Takeovers offers a crucial addition to our understanding of the processes by which the ‘Aryanization’ of large Jewish businesses took place during Hitler’s Third Reich. Whereas scholars have mainly focused on the 1936–1938 period as the interval during which such expropriations—directed from above by the party-state—had occurred, Katin instead locates the period during the early years of the regime, 1933–1935. He demonstrates that these were affected privately by nonpolitical actors, who covertly colluded with some of the country’s largest banks, as they exploited the rising tide of anti-Semitism for purely personal gain. This study is an important work of revisionism that seriously alters the dimensions of a considerable historiography on a compelling and fraught historical issue.

• Chapter One: How Cheap Purchases of German-Jewish Firms OccurredChapter Two: History of Research on Cheap Purchases of Jewish FirmsChapter Three: New Approach to Comprehend AryanizersChapter Four: Background to Aryanization of the Hermann Tietz ChainChapter Five: Aryanization of Hermann TietzChapter Six: Early Aryanizations Confirming the Hermann Tietz ParadigmChapter Seven: Conclusion

William M. Katin, PhD, is lecturer at the California State University, San Bernardino.

William M. Katin’s Hostile Takeovers offers a crucial addition to our understanding of the processes by which the ‘Aryanization’ of large Jewish businesses took place during Hitler’s Third Reich. Whereas scholars have mainly focused on the 1936–1938 period as the interval during which such expropriations—directed from above by the party-state—had occurred, Katin instead locates the period during the early years of the regime, 1933–1935. He demonstrates that these were affected privately by nonpolitical actors, who covertly colluded with some of the country’s largest banks, as they exploited the rising tide of anti-Semitism for purely personal gain. This study is an important work of revisionism that seriously alters the dimensions of a considerable historiography on a compelling and fraught historical issue.

• Chapter One: How Cheap Purchases of German-Jewish Firms OccurredChapter Two: History of Research on Cheap Purchases of Jewish FirmsChapter Three: New Approach to Comprehend AryanizersChapter Four: Background to Aryanization of the Hermann Tietz ChainChapter Five: Aryanization of Hermann TietzChapter Six: Early Aryanizations Confirming the Hermann Tietz ParadigmChapter Seven: Conclusion