Writing a history of art dealing in the Third Reich presents a special challenge, not only because of the difficult situation regarding source material. The actors’ activities are enmeshed in outrageous contradictions involving complicity and sabotage. The range of issues includes the day-to-day business of art dealers through to the resistance to restrictive regulations, from auction trade through to black market, from numerous crimes involving not only Jewish collectors and dealers, through to art theft in countries occupied by German forces.

In this book, art historians and economic historians investigate the art market and its mechanisms under National Socialism, the role of art theft and, in particular, that of modern and "degenerate" works of art in the art market.