RECONSTRUCTING THE POST-WAR FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE: DEUTSCHE BANK AND ITS CORRESPONDENT BANKING NETWORK AFTER 1945
October 2025 | Global Correspondent Banking 1870–2000 Working Paper Series, Vol. 1, No. 7 | University of Oxford.
Abstract
After the Second World War, Deutsche Bank along with other German universal banks was decentralized by the Allied authorities and divided into separate regional banks in the British, French, and American zones. Deutsche Bank was split into 10 successor banks, which maintained independent international divisions to restore and manage their cross-border banking services. By 1957, the successor banks outside Berlin had re-integrated their business and embarked on a dual process of consolidation and international expansion. This paper explores the gradual rebuilding of Deutsche Bank’s international business between the 1940s and 1960s by examining how the banking group revived its correspondent banking relations with London. Its growing financial connectivity is charted through new datasets of its bilateral correspondent connections, alongside bank-level evidence on its corporate strategy. West Germany’s strong export performance and the associated expansion in trade-related payments were particularly influential in the revival of the bank’s international connections, a process that gathered pace after the London Debt Accord of 1953. As West Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank and its re-activated correspondent network thus provides a window on how the post-war financial architecture was reorganised during an era of economic reconstruction, integration, and globalization.
Keywords
Correspondent banking, cross-border payments, international banking, West Germany’s economic reconstruction, globalization
