Bureaucracy, Work and Violence: The Reich Ministry of Labour in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Description

Work played a central role in Nazi ideology and propaganda, and even today there remain some who still emphasize the supposedly positive aspects of the regime's labor policies, ignoring the horrific and inhumane conditions they produced. This definitive volume provides, for the first time, a systematic study of the Reich Ministry of Labor and its implementation of National Socialist work doctrine. In detailed and illuminating chapters, contributors scrutinize political maneuvering, ministerial operations, relations between party and administration, and individual officials' actions to reveal the surprising extent to which administrative apparatuses were involved in the Nazi regime and its crimes. Bureaucracy, Work and Violence Contents Figures and Tables Preface Abbreviations Introduction Part I — Administrative Structure, Personnel and Institutional Conflicts Chapter 1 — The Reich Ministry of Labour, 1919–1945: Organization, Leading Personnel and Political Room for Manoeuvre Chapter 2 — Mid-Level Civil Servants’ Education, Professional Life and Career Structure Chapter 3 — The Reich Ministry of Labour and the German Labour Front: Permanent Conflict and Informal Cooperation Part II — Policy Fields Chapter 4 — The Housing Policies of the Reich Ministry of Labour Chapter 5 — Pension Insurance Policy: The Impact of Labour Deployment and Discrimination Chapter 6 — Labour Law in the Nazi State: The Labour Trustees and the Criminalization of Breaches of Employment Contract Chapter 7 — The Labour Administration and the Organization of the War Economy Part III — Expansion, War and Crimes Chapter 8 — Social Policy: External Propaganda and Imperial Ambitions Chapter 9 — Labour Administration and Manpower Recruitment in Occupied Europe: Belgium and the General Government Chapter 10 — The General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment and the Reich Ministry of Labour Chapter 11 — Holocaust and Labour Administration: Jewish Labour Deployment in the Ghettos of the Occupied Eastern Territories Part IV — The Ministry after 1945 Chapter 12 — A Vanishing Act: The Reich Ministry of Labour and the Nuremberg Trials, 1945–1949 Chapter 13 — New Beginnings and Continuities: The Top Personnel of the Central German Labour Authorities, 1945–1960 Appendix I — Designations of Office Appendix II — Biographies Index