The International Institute of Social History as a Pawn of Nazi Social Research

Abstract

The 27th of January 1941 was a memorable day in the bizarre history of the Amsterdam International Institute of Social History during the German occupation. Within the scope of activity of his “Office for the Occupied Territories”, NSDAP Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg placed the Lieutenant-Commander and Nazi publisher Eberhard Kautter “in charge” of the IISH: “It is your duty to be responsible for the organizational supervision and the deployment of those staff members who qualify for the utilization of the institute. Your mission is to be carried out in agreement with the head of the Netherlands work group of the task force from my office, Oberbereichsleiter Schirmer.” On the same day, the bustling chief of the self-namedEinsatzstab(task force), in his function as “Commissioner of the Führer for the Supervision of all Mental and Ideological Training and Education”, approached Robert Ley, the Reichsorganisationsleiter of the NSDAP and head of theDeutsche Arbeitsfront(DAF – German Labor Front). He had a letter sent to him that Eberhard Kautter had drafted already in early January and had obviously withheld until Kautter had been named to the post of IISH administrator. Rosenberg reminded Ley that, in a decree from 29 January 1940, Hitler had entrusted him with all of the preparations for the establishment of aHohe Schule(Supreme School), that was to be the “central site of National Socialist research, instruction and education”. Thus, he was “setting up a number of branch institutes of the Supreme School”. Among these was an “academy”, the task of which would be to work out the close connection between the “National SocialistWeltanschauung” and the “practical way of structuring life” both for the present and the future. Now he was contacting him, since Ley was also interested in “the relationship between Weltanschauung and social structuring” in his function as Reichsleiter of the DAF and had certainly run up against similar problems within the scope of the extensive “economic-statistical work” of his office.