The Puzzle of Nazi Modernism: Modern Technology and Ideological Consensus in an SS Factory at Auschwitz MICHAEL ALLEN References to Nazi “factories of death” are so common that they verge on cliché.1 Yet, remarkably, historians of the Third Reich have seldom confronted the role of technology or modern production organization in the Nazi genocide.2 In general, we have too casually linked Germany’s reputation for world-class engineering and effi ciency to the Holocaust without bothering to discuss or understand the nature of modern bureaucratic organization or the technology Dr. Allen teaches in the Department of History, Technology and Society at the Georgia Institute ofTechnology. He is deeply grateful for the comments of Ed Con stant, Peter Hayes, Ray Stokes, Miroslav Karny, Michal McMahon, Herbert Mehrtens, Wolfgang Scheffler, and the Arbeitskreis around Scheffler at the Zentralinstitut für Antisemitismusforschung, especially Silke Ammerschubert, Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein, and Martina Voigt. This study was aided by a grant from the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright Commission. An earlier version of this article won the 1995 Levinson Prize. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s. 1 Examples of scholarly work include Lucy Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Histo rians (Cambridge, 1981), p. 20; Hans Mommsen, “The Realization of the Unthink able: The ‘Final Solution of theJewish Question’ in the Third Reich,” in The Politics of Genocide, ed. Gerhard Hirschfeld (London, 1986), pp. 97, 126; Saul Friedlánder, introduction to Hitler und die Endldsung: “Es ist der Fiihrers Wunsch . . . ”, by Gerald Fleming (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), p. xlv. More generally, see Richard Evans, In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and theAttempt to Escapefrom the Nazi Past (New York, 1989). The intellectual historian Ernst Nolte also alluded to “the uniqueness of a technological genocide” in the article that incited the “Historikerstreit," “Vergangenheit die nichtvergehen will,” FrankfurterAllgemeine 7eitung, 6June 1986.Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and MargaretJacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York, 1994), p. 7, deploys the same rhetoric in an American Historikerstreit. Not the preci sion of these statements but their ubiquity is interesting, that historians as far left as Mommsen and as far right as Nolte should share the same opinion about technol ogy and Nazism, although none has ever really studied it. 2Since this article was drafted there have been encouraging beginnings: JeanClaude Pressac, Die Krematorien von Auschwitz: Die Technik des Massenmordes (München, 1993); and Robert-Jan van Pelt, “A Site in Search of a Mission,” in Anat omy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Michael Burnbaum (Bloomington, Ind., 1994), pp. 93-156.© 1996 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/96/3703-0001$01.00 527 528 Michael Allen policy directly promoted by those Nazis who managed the mass ex termination of human beings. The urge to judge this “dark side” of Western material culture is laudable. Unfortunately, for the mo ment we lack the historical knowledge needed to speak with credibil ity and precision. The only notable work to address the engineering profession was written twenty years ago: Karl-Heinz Ludwig’s Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich, an excellent beginning that few have followed.3 This study focuses on a small managerial community at the Golleschauer Portland Cement Factory, established by the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) in the town of Golleschau southwest of Auschwitz, and is intended to complement Ludwig’s exploration ofengineering and National Socialism. National Socialism prescribed several visions of German society that managers at Golleschau sought to enact within the world of the cement works. These visions will be treated here as an example of the more general intermingling of ideals, managerial practice, and technological work. As this article will attempt to show, the Nazi catastrophe should not be considered an unfathomable ex ception.4 The story of Golleschau can contribute to the growing literature on the commitment ofengineers and midlevel managers to ideologi cal goals.5 This literature demonstrates that many interlocking pieces 3Karl-Heinz Ludwig, Technik und Ingenieure im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf, 1974), pp. 53-63, 344-403; see also Karl-Heinz Ludwig “Vereinsarbeit im Dritten Reich 1933 bis 1945,” in his Technik, Ingenieure und Gesellschaft: Geschichte des...
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