ENCOUNTERS WITH NAZISM: BRITISH ACCOUNTANTS AND THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ACCOUNTING

In 1936 a committee of British accountants chose Nazi Germany as the venue for the Fifth International Congress on Accounting. This event was to constitute the most prominent encounter between the international accountancy profession and the Hitlerian state. The paper examines the reasons why the professional elite in Britain patronised a regime whose racist foundations were transparent and where the vocation of accountancy was being reprofessionalised on the basis of arayanisation and party-state control. The protection of advances into the German market for professional services by some of the major British and American accounting firms encouraged a conciliatory approach toward the National Socialist state. In attending the Congress in 1938 the accounting community entered a highly politicised arena, fraternised with future war criminals, succumbed to Nazi propaganda, and, during the zenith of `appeasement', made utterances which appeared to condone the activities of the fascist state in the realm of accounting and economics. The paper reveals the manner in which the early institutions of international accounting could be captured by an abhorrent regime.