Albert Speer: How To Manage an Atrocity

Abstract

Albert Speer as democratic manager? Seems absurd on the surface, even outrageous. Hitler's right-hand-man practiced a rather bizarre form of hu manistic management in the Ministry of Armaments and War while "suc cessfully" managing an atrocity. His legacy to history, particularly manage ment history, is one of the most fascinating cases for raising the ethical issues facing the management community today. Values and ethics are at the core of democratic thought, and the way they are distorted in the arenas of manage ment is crucial to understand for those concerned with linking the ethics of democracy to the process of managing democratic institutions.

Much of this article is based on an interview with Speer in which he discussed his role as a key policy maker in the Third Reich. He has now begun to recount the danger inherent in a system whose mentality is one of amoral functionalism—one essentially devoid of morals and ethics in its decision- making processes and one concerned only with how things get done and not whether they should be done. Few people have any real need to relive the events of that era. But the activities of Albert Speer are as relevant to our present era as any behavior in history can be.