Bound for a casual reader, this book expands beyond a biography of a banking syndicate, who was solely fit to transform Germany from the post-Versailles devastation to a dignified blooming. A chronicle of German economy between the wars, it is an even-handed treatment of a controversial banker, a man who helped ease Hitler's rise to power and then fell out and landed up in a concentration camp. A rare-power economist and financier, a genius, meantime a hard person to like, Hjalmar Schacht's global legacy is related to his establishment of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), Mefo bills and Autobahns that unequivocally led to Wirtschaftswunder.