Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle

ISBN-13: 9781845456313 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 290 str.

David Meskill

Opis

During the twentieth century, German government and industry created a highly skilled workforce as part of an ambitious program to control and develop the countrys human resources. Yet, these long-standing efforts to match as many workers as possible to skilled vocations and to establish a system of job training have received little scholarly attention, until now. The authors account of the broad support for this program challenges the standard historical accounts that focus on disagreements over the German political-economic order and points instead to an important area of consensus. These advances are explained in terms of political policies of corporatist compromise and national security as well as industrys evolving production strategies. By tracing the development of these policies over the course of a century, the author also suggests important continuities in Germanys domestic politics, even across such different regimes as Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, and post-1945 West Germany.David Meskill received a Ph.D. in Modern European History from Harvard University. He has published articles on the Labor Administration, applied psychology, and Alexis de Tocqueville. He is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Dowling College.