Libres para obedecer

Is there any relationship between the management of a current company and the organization of work in Nazi Germany? Reinhard Höhn is the archetype of the technocrat at the service of the Third Reich. As a jurist, passionate about military history, he distinguished himself for his reflections on the relations between the State and the "community", defined by race and its "vital space"; and on the organization of the institutions at the service of the Third Reich, the new structures that had to be created and the reforms that had to be undertaken. Work that he shared with other high officials of Nazism such as Herbert Backe, Oswald Pohl, Hans Kammler, Albert Speer, Wilhelm Stuckart... Höhn reached the rank of general of the SS. At the end of the war, Reinhard Höhn created a business school in Bad Harzburg in which over the years the future elites of German business management and leadership were trained, those who contributed to the "German miracle". Some 600,000 managers of the main German corporations, not counting the 100,000 who had distance training or acquired the teachings of the school through its seminars or its many success manuals. In other words, a good number of the elites of the German economy and employers were trained in business management and human resources following the business management model that had been given in Nazism. A model that is based on the hierarchical organization of work by definition of objectives, but encouraging individual and creative initiatives, delegating responsibilities to workers who can freely choose the means to undertake them. But that, unfortunately in this case, served to develop the war economy of the Third Reich and the extermination of millions of people.