While few of the bank's personnel joined the Nazi Party before 1933, many "opportunists" did so after Hitler assumed power, Mr. James noted. At the end of the war in 1945, 44 of the bank's 84 branch officers were party members. All of them had joined after 1933.

In the period from 1933 to 1938, the bank was often torn between social responsibility and economic necessity. Some of the bank's branches, many of which still had Jewish employees and even managers, refused to compile lists of Jewish customers, for example. Others did so without being asked.

At the same time, a Nazi official in Duisburg was ordering the bank to take down its swastika-bearing flag on the grounds that a "Jewish company" was not allowed to fly the party's banner, yet the head of the bank's Bochum branch tried to cite "Mein Kampf" in a rulebook for employees.

By 1938, when the expropriation of Jewish-owned property and businesses became public policy, the bank had assisted in the forced transfer of 330 companies from Jewish to Aryan ownership.

"If the bank had not mediated in the sale of assets, it would have been even more difficult for the victims of Nazi persecution to save even the small percentage that Germans laws allowed them to keep and transfer abroad," Mr. James wrote. "On the other hand, in assisting in the process, the bank not only profited through the collection of sizable fees, but also helped the government reach its political, racially motivated goals."

Mr. James is equally critical of the bank's role in helping Hitler consolidate control over countries he had conquered. When the German Economics Ministry tried to force Deutsche Bank to assume control over Dutch banks and Dresdner Bank AG to take over Belgium's banks, Deutsche Bank protested, but only because it wanted to reinforce its domination in Belgium, not Holland.

The author was astounded to find files on supposed underground resistance activities of Hermann Josef Abs, the bank's wartime chairman and one of the world's most powerful bankers in the postwar years.