while it is impossible not to deplore the role of Allianz executives and other businessmen in Aryanizations, it is necessary to understand that they were not operating in a context where either traditional business ethics or capitalist economic rationality counted for much anymore. Having once persuaded themselves that they could “prevent the worst” by joining the Party and working within the context of the regime, they increasingly found themselves in a situation where “preventing the worst” became a daily activity and where increasing engagement with the regime and its goals was the necessary result. This had profound consequences for the investment policies of banks and insurance companies. These were, it must be remembered, regulated institutions that had remained under the cloud of recent scandals and financial collapses and whose social worth was constantly being challenged by powerful elements in the regime.

The cloud was indeed made much heavier in March 1936 by the collapse of the Austrian Phönix Life, the causes of which were painfully similar to those of the Favag's demise. Like the latter, Phönix Life was a very large company — in fact, the third largest on the European continent — and one that did business in no fewer than 22 countries. Just as Favag owed its rise and fall to Paul Dumcke, so was Phönix Life's fate intimately bound up with its leading director, Wilhelm Berliner – by all accounts a remarkable personality with extraordinary talents as a linguist, mathematician, financial expert, and lawyer, and a man who had close connections with the Austrian government. Like Favag, Phönix Life overexpanded after the war and for similar reasons.