This book traces how Gottfried Feder and Fritz Todt made technology essential to the Nazi ‘world view’. They groomed engineers with a racist technical ideology that prepared them to later supervise slave labor and the Holocaust. Their concepts evolved from völkisch technocracy to an idealized harmony of man, machine and nature, and were eclipsed by Albert Speer’s total war. Partially due to willing ‘self-coordination’ from engineers, they gained political control over the engineering profession. Destined to be pillars of the Volksgemeinschaft, engineers were indoctrinated with Nazi principles of Aryan superiority at the Reich School of Technology, the Plassenburg. Nazi propaganda announced a bright future through technology, furthering a sense of normalcy in Germany, despite the ruthless exclusion of those unwanted.
Author(s): John C. Guse
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 319
Tags: History Of Germany And Central Europe; History Of World War II And The Holocaust; History Of Technology
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
Abbreviations
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Gottfried Feder and Völkisch Technocracy
Chapter 3: The Militant League of German Architects and Engineers
Chapter 4: Feder to Todt: Limited Gleichschaltung of Engineers, 1933–1934
Chapter 5: Gottfried Feder and Settlement: New Cities for the Volk
Chapter 6: The Autobahn: Technology, Nature, Heimat, and Art
Chapter 7: Fritz Todt and the Reordering of German Technology, 1935–1937
Chapter 8: Educating Engineers: The Plassenburg School and Deutsche Technik
Chapter 9: The Nazi “Voyages of Technology”
Chapter 10: Fritz Todt, War Minister, 1939–1943
Chapter 11: Fritz Todt’s “Speaker System”
Chapter 12: Albert Speer and the End of “German Technology”
Chapter 13: Technology for Pleasure and Death
Chapter 14: Conclusion
Bibliography
Archival and Research Center Sources
Published Primary Sources
Contemporary Periodicals Consulted
Selected Secondary Sources
Index
