State-corporate crimes are illegal or socially injurious actions that result from a mutually reinforcing interaction between policies and/or practices in pursuit of the goals of one or more institutions of political governance, and policies and/or practices in pursuit of the goals of one or more institutions of economic production and distribution (Michalowski, & Kramer, 2006). One of the most destructive and murderous crimes in the history of human civilization is the Holocaust (Stone, 2019). Organized and carried out by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), the holocaust represents one of the most outstanding examples of state organized crime in modern times (Halebsky, 2015). The state was not the only player as there were various corporate players involved in the perpetuation and/or facilitation of the Nazi-German annihilation of Jews in Europe. Ford, GM, and IBM are examples of organizations that were complicit in the holocaust.
While Ford and GM collaborated with the Nazis to manufacture vehicles and weapons that were used in the war effort, IBM assisted with logistics and people tracking by using the Hollerith machine (Smith, 2016). State-corporate crimes continue to be perpetuated even today. For example, in 2018, Lockheed Martin – the largest weapons producer in the world and the US governments largest contractor – was responsible for the bomb that killed 40 Yemeni schoolchildren. Although this was not an active crime by the organization, it still amounts to one. State initiated state corporate crimes and state facilitated state corporate crimes are both state crimes but with slight differences. State facilitated crimes are those that are not committed by the state directly but rather through corporations and other agents who are facilitated by the government. State initiated crimes, on the other hand, are directly initiated and perpetuated by the state.