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Free to Obey
- How the Nazis Invented Modern Management
- Narrated by: Cory J. Herndon
- Length: 3 hrs and 59 mins
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Free to Obey
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Publisher's Summary
What if the rules of modern capitalism were written during the Third Reich?
Reinhard Höhn (1904-2000) was a commander of the SS, one of Nazi Germany’s most brilliant legal minds, and an archetype of the fervid technocrats and intellectuals that built the Third Reich. Following Germany’s defeat, after a few years in hiding, he emerged in the early 1950s as the founder and director of a renowned management school in Lower Saxony.
Höhn’s story wouldn’t be very different from that of many other prominent Nazis if not for the fact that a vast number of Germany’s postwar business leaders—more than 600,000 executives—were educated at his management school.
In this fascinating book, Johann Chapoutot, one of France’s most brilliant historians, traces the profound links between Nazism and the principles of modern corporate management, our definitions of success, and a concept of personal freedom that masks rigid hierarchical structures of power and control.
“One of the most gifted European historians of his generation.”—Timothy Snyder, New York Times best-selling author of On Tyranny
What the critics say
“Eye-opening... French historian Johann Chapoutot traces an astonishing continuity: from the social Darwinism of the Victorian age, to modern supermarket logistics, via the Nazis.”—The Sunday Telegraph
“Refreshingly tart...Free to Obey’s evidence of how Nazism has inspired our work culture is as relevant as the media’s concern for the rise of neo-Nazi groups.”—Bill Marx, The Arts Fuse
“If you have ever detected the acrid smell of sulfur while encountering ‘management speak’ you are not alone.”—Brad, Island Books, Mercer Island, WA