A Terrible Efficiency

Entrepreneurial Bureaucrats and the Nazi Holocaust

Franklin G. Mixon, Jr., Franklin G. Mixon Jr.

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030257668
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030257675
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

This book provides numerous examples that apply the modern theory of bureaucracy developed in Breton and Wintrobe (1982 and 1986) to the Nazi Holocaust. More specifically, the book argues, as do Breton and Wintrobe (1986), that the subordinates in the Nazi bureaucracy were not "following orders" as they claimed during the war crimes trials at Nuremberg and elsewhere, but were instead exhibiting an entrepreneurial spirit in competing with one another in order to find the most efficient way of exacting the Final Solution. This involved engaging in a process of exchange with their superiors, wherein the subordinates offered the kinds of informal services that are not codified in formal contracts. In doing so, they were competing for the rewards, or informal payments not codified in formal contracts, that were conferred by those at the top of the bureaucracy. These came in the form of rapid promotion, perquisites (pecuniary and in-kind), and other awards. The types of exchanges described above are based on "trust," not formal institutions.

 

© The Author(s) 2019

F. G. Mixon, Jr.A Terrible Efficiencyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25767-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Organization of Terror and Murder

Franklin G. MixonJr.¹

(1)

Center for Economic Education, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA, USA

Franklin G. MixonJr.

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The chapter opens with the story of the 1960 capture of Adolf Eichmann by Israel’s intelligence service. Eichmann was, at that time, arguably the most notorious Nazi war criminal who still remained at large during the 15 years since the end of World War II. Eichmann had been signatory on most of the 1600 documents related to the “Final Solution” that became evidence during his 1961 trial. This chapter also introduces readers to the scale of the crimes perpetrated by Eichmann and his colleagues in the Nazi apparatus—a scale that fits the implications of the modern theory of bureaucracy developed in a book by Albert Breton and Ronald Wintrobe titled The Logic of Bureaucratic Conduct (Cambridge University Press, 1982).

Keywords

Nazi HolocaustModern theory of bureaucracyEntrepreneurship

End Abstract

The Ghosts of Garibaldi Street

On the evening of May 11, 1960, Ricardo Klement strolled from a bus stop on Garibaldi Street in a Buenos Aires, Argentina, suburb to his nearby home.¹ Klement’s identification papers claimed that he was born in Bolzano, Italy, and that as an adult he had acquired skills as a technician. In 1950, he had emigrated from Italy to the San Fernando suburb of Buenos Aires, where he worked in a metal factory.² After some time in this position, he moved to the Argentinian province of Tucuman, where he worked at the Capri engineering firm. It was then that Klement was joined by his wife and son, who had recently arrived from post-war Europe.³ When Capri declared bankruptcy in 1953, the Klement family moved to Buenos Aires where Ricardo worked for a number of companies, finally situating with a Mercedes Benz workshop in 1959. At 8:05 p.m. on May 11, 1960, after a long day of working at this job, he was returning home.⁴

As Klement headed away by foot from the neighborhood bus stop, he passed near two cars that were broken down on the side of the street—each about 30 yards apart from the other, and each accompanied by a small group of men who were busily attempting to repair the vehicles. As Klement moved past the cars, a man from one of the two groups approached him and said, “Just a moment.”⁵ At this point, both groups of men surrounded Klement, and, after a struggle lasting 10 minutes, forced him into one of the vehicles.⁶ Forty minutes later, at 8:55 p.m., the two cars pulled into the garage of what turned out to be a safe house occupied by the Mossad , Israel’s new intelligence service, where the men, who were Mossad agents, secured their captive.⁷ There, Klement admitted, under interrogation, that his real identity was not Ricardo Klement, but instead was Adolf Eichmann, arguably the most notorious Nazi war criminal who still remained at large during the 15 years since the end of World War II.⁸

Eichmann remained in Mossad custody in Argentina for 11 days, after which he was secretly flown to Israel to stand trial for crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity.⁹ Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem began on April 11, 1961, and continued through December 15, 1961, when he was pronounced guilty of most of 15 criminal indictments and sentenced to death.¹⁰ In securing the guilty verdict, the Israeli prosecutors had prepared more than 100 survivor witnesses, gathered a panel of expert witnesses, including historians and other scholars, and provided the court with 1600 documents related to Nazi Germany’s so-called Final Solution to “the Jewish Question.” Most of these documents contained Eichmann’s signature as a high-ranking member of the bureaucratic apparatus that would, over the relatively brief period of the global conflict, murder six million European Jews.¹¹

The “Terrible Efficiency” of the Nazi Bureaucracy of Murder

The scale of the crimes committed by Eichmann and the innu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. The Organization of Terror and Murder
• 2. The Modern Theory of Bureaucracy
• 3. Bureaucratic Competition in the Third Reich
• 4. Vertical Trust Networks in the Nazi Bureaucracy
• 5. Horizontal Trust Networks in the Nazi Bureaucracy
• 6. Coercion and Vertical Trust in the Nazi Bureaucracy
• 7. The Last of the Third Reich’s Vertical Trust Networks?
• Back Matter