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A review by n_ck
Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties by David de Jong
dark
informative
medium-paced
4.0
An excellent, readable piece of narrative non-fiction, exhaustively researched, detailing the sordid lives of the men who profited off plunder and genocide and their wretched fail sons who continue to avoid accountability. This book came out in the context of debates over how we publicly remember the history of those committed grave crimes but commanded the heights of society. It makes a forceful argument to fight the culture of silence or the relativist hand-waving meant to dismiss the crimes of the men who've had museums, professorships, foundations and streets named after them. It also raises important question about where wealth comes from and what sort of politics its produces when its history goes un-interrograted. As I finished this book, news came out that Elon Musk was backing the AfD and I couldn't help but pay closer attention to the story of these Nazi Billionaires who plundered and never paid for it.