The studies of the Historical Commission of the Deutsche Bank, in contrast to the studies of various governmental and some other commissions assigned the task of dealing with the role of business in the National Socialist period and Holocaust assets, are to be viewed as the products of the individual scholarship of its members. The ultimate responsibility for what is said in our studies rests with the author of each work produced under the auspices of the commission. Although it certainly is to be expected that historians sharing the same basic moral and political values and confronted with a certain basic set of facts can and should reach a reasonable level of agreement or consensus about their basic significance and interpretation, it would be unnatural and unreasonable to expect that each of us would tell the same story in exactly the same way and that there would not be differences of nuance and of emphasis in the way we would present our material and findings. The commission has and continues to see as its task the careful reading and detailed discussion of the studies completed by its members to ensure that the works in question meet the highest standards of scholarship and that they reflect a defensible and responsible presentation of evidence and conclusions.