The Transatlantic House of Lazard, the First World War, and Interwar European Reconstruction

Roberts, “The Transatlantic House of Lazard”: The Lazard investment banking firm, with linked houses in Paris, London, and New York, was one of the more prominent private transnational financial houses of the first half of the 20th century. During World War I its partners, an eclectic mix of members of the Franco-German-American Jewish elite and well-connected British financiers, were staunchly pro-Allied during World War I. Following the war, they supported a continuation of the wartime Anglo-Franco-American alliance as the best means of maintaining peace. Post-war issues related to the treatment of Germany nonetheless strained the unity of the firm. The partners (most of them members of the Lazard family) in the French house, the leading institution of the three interlocking firms, advocated a more punitive approach toward Germany than did their colleagues in either the British or American branches. From 1919 onward, Sir Robert Kindersley and Robert H. Brand, the most prominent figures in the London Lazard Brothers firm, were both deeply involved in the interwar financial and reparations diplomatic negotiations, which envisaged the imposition of a relatively lenient economic peace settlement upon Germany. The foremost members of the American house, Charles Altschul and his son Frank Altschul, were fiercely Anglophile in outlook, but also still had family members in Germany, whom they assisted financially following the war. They too adhered to the less punitive outlook of their British associates. This paper, which draws heavily upon the extensive archival collections of Frank Altschul and Robert Brand, explores how these divergent national outlooks played out in terms of interwar economic policies.