Agility is a management buzzword of our time. But the concept was already used by the National Socialists. A conversation with historian Johann Chapou

How the Nazis pioneered modern management theory

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2021-06-19 13:00:06

Agility is a management buzzword of our time. But the concept was already used by the National Socialists. A conversation with historian Johann Chapoutot.

Berlin - Flat hierarchies, inner leadership, efficiency - all principles we know from modern management theory. Such principles have a tradition - they already served the Prussians as a method to make their military and administration more agile in the early 19th century. German executives still proudly speak of this style of management. What's often ignored, though, is its prevalence during another period of German history: the Nazi dictatorship. Hitler employed many of the same methods that companies use today.

French historian Johann Chapoutot focuses on the connection in Free to Obey: Management, from Nazism to Today. He traces modern management methods back to their roots in National Socialism. In an interview with the Berliner Zeitung, he explained why Hitler's leadership principle was essentially not authoritarian and how former members of the SS shaped management schools after World War II.

Berliner Zeitung: Mr Chapoutot, you write in your book that reading the historical documents you felt there was something very comtemporary about them: "You read a word or a sentence and the past is suddenly very present." What did you mean?

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