Powering Conquest. How German Corporations Sustained Occupation in World War II Ukraine

Abstract

While German business’s complicity in Nazi-era crimes from “Aryanization” to forced labor and mass murder has been well documented by historical research, corporate expansion into occupied Europe has received much less attention. Beyond plundering and labor recruitment we still know little about what German companies actually did abroad and whether it mattered to the actual war effort. The present article follows several electrical and construction companies, among them Siemens, AEG, and Philipp Holzmann, to wartime Ukraine, the most important arena of German economic exploitation in Eastern Europe. It traces their role within the occupation regime, their crucial contribution to the war, and their own goals in the process. Through a detailed examination of the giant, world-renowned hydroelectric power plant DniproGES (Dneprostoi), we argue that private business both literally and metaphorically powered German conquest, occupation, and the continuing war effort.