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Some big businessmen did contribute to the Nazi election funds but German capitalism cannot be regarded, on the evidence, as having collectively brought fascism to power in any direct sense. Fascism in Germany was a mass movement brought to power through collusion with a bankrupt but traditional elite, not as the puppet of big business.

— Richard Overy The Nazi economic recovery 1931-1938 (1996)

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More quotes by Richard Overy

Indeed, many businessmen seem on the evidence to have been wary of the closet anti-capitalism of the rank-and-file Nazis.

War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994)

Göring industrial empire represented, in this sense, one of the major steps towards restricting private industrial capitalism and substituting a ‘völkisch’, state-run industrial economy.

War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994)

Nazi political hegemony in the end prevented German capitalists from acting as capitalists.

War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994)

The [Nazi] regime was also able to use the state-owned multi-nationals as a ‘battering ram’ for entering economies that were not occupied territory.

War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994)

Hitler was ‘an enemy of free-market economics’ and a ‘reluctant dirigiste.’

War and Economy in the Third Reich (1994)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Richard Overy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.