Blessing's statements that he was unaware of Nazi treatment of Jews: in 1941, he wrote a letter asking to take possession of an apartment which the Gestapo had recently taken from a Jewish family.

[1] As the American historian Christopher Simpson notes in his book The Splendid Blond Beast, a ground-breaking study of the links between big business and genocide, Blessing attended 30 out of 38 meetings of the Himmlerkreis, the secret group of financiers and industrialists who bankrolled the private projects of Heinrich Himmler.

[2] During the war, Blessing joined the board of Kontinentale Öl, a monopoly created by IG Farben and private oil companies to seize control of petroleum firms in the newly conquered territories, and served as a member of its senior management team.

His fellow board members included Walther Funk, the Reichsbank president and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) director, and Heinrich Butefisch, a senior executive at IG Farben.

At best he was complicit in genocide, at worst he was what Simon Wiesenthal called a “desk-murderer”, a loyal follower always eager to do his duty, no matter what the cost in human lives.

[3] Shortly after retiring as President of the Deutsche Bundesbank in 1969 Blessing died in Rasteau, France aged 71, garlanded with praise from his fellow bankers and the German establishment, his wartime role at Kontinentale-Öl forgotten or glossed over.