Abstract
This article examines the ways and means by which the German state-controlled concern Reichswerke Hermann Göring expanded into the occupied mining areas in Austria, East Central Europe and Western Europe before and during the Second World War. Only about five years after its foundation in 1937 the Reichswerke had already become the largest industrial conglomeration for heavy industry and armaments in Europe. Despite certain differences in time (before the War and during the War) and region (East Central Europe and Western Europe) the expansion of the Reichswerke is characterized in the first place by blackmail and theft. In this respect it served as a prototype for other state and party controlled enterprises and it acts as a model to partly explain the brutalization of the business practices performed by private businesses in occupied Europe during the Second World War.
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