During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of prisoners were worked to death by the Nazis under a brutal system of slave labor in the concentration camps. By 1942, this vast network of slavery extended across all of German-occupied Europe, yet the whole operation was run by a surprisingly small staff of bureaucrats-no more than 200 officials of the Business Administration Main Office of the SS (WVHA). Michael Thad Allen contradicts the assumption that the SS forced slavery upon the German economy, demonstrating that instead industrialists from many of Germany's best-known corporation actively sought out its expertise in managing slavery. Moreover, while the bureaucrats who oversaw Holocaust operations have often been seen as technocrats or simple "cogs in the machinery," Allen reveals their ideological dedication, even fanatical devotion, to slavery and genocide in the name of National Socialism. During the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of prisoners were worked to death by the Nazis under a brutal system of slave labor in the concentration camps. By 1942, this vast network of slavery extended across all of German-occupied Europe, yet the whole operation was run by a surprisingly small staff of bureaucrats-no more than 200 officials of the Business Administration Main Office of the SS (WVHA). Michael Thad Allen contradicts the assumption that the SS forced slavery upon the German economy, demonstrating that instead industrialists from many of Germany's best-known corporation actively sought out its expertise in managing slavery. Moreover, while the bureaucrats who oversaw Holocaust operations have often been seen as technocrats or simple "cogs in the machinery," Allen reveals their ideological dedication, even fanatical devotion, to slavery and genocide in the name of National Socialism. About the Author Michael Thad Allen is assistant professor of modern German history and the history of technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
