[PEN-L:5672] Turner vs. Abraham on Role of Big Business in Rise of Hitler

[LYNN TURGEON, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF ECONOMICS, HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY, [EMAIL PROTECTED]]

Some evidence on the above subject can be found in Eric Hobsbawm's "The Age of
Catastrophe" p. 129:
        As for the "monopoly capitalist" thesis, the point about really big
business is that it can come to terms with any regime that does not actually
expropriate it, and any regime must come to terms with it.Fascism was no more
'the expression of the interests of monopoly capital' than the American New
Deal or British Labour governments, or the Weimar Republic.  Big business in
the early 1930's did not particujlarly want Hitler, and would have preferred
more orthodox conservatism.  It gave him little support until the Great Slump,
and even then support was late and patchy. However, when he came to power,
business collaborated wholeheartedly, up to the point of using slave labour and
extermination camp labour for its operations during the Second World War. 
Large and small business, of course, benefited from the exporpriation of the
Jews. 
        IMHO, this represents a tilt towards Turner's interpretation.  Lynn