Berghahn Books Optimizing the German Workforce: Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle: 31 (Monographs in German History, 31)

During the twentieth century, German government and industry created a highly skilled workforce as part of an ambitious program to control and develop the country's human resources. Yet, these long-standing efforts to match as many workers as possible to skilled vocations and to establish a system of job training have received little scholarly attention, until now. The author's account of the broad support for this program challenges the standard historical accounts that focus on disagreements over the German political-economic order and points instead to an important area of consensus. These advances are explained in terms of political policies of corporatist compromise and national security as well as industry's evolving production strategies. By tracing the development of these policies over the course of a century, the author also suggests important continuities in Germany's domestic politics, even across such different regimes as Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, and post-1945 West Germany. David Meskill received a Ph.D. in Modern European History from Harvard University. He has published articles on the Labor Administration, applied psychology, and Alexis de Tocqueville. He is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Dowling College. Review "[A] rich and closely argued work. He s hows convincingly how a bureaucracy could adapt to the specific interests of labor, employers, and the state itself under successive regimes to create such continuity. This study prompts one to ask whether other administrative areas with similar continuities quietly existed elsewhere as well, while providing the methodological tools to explore those continuities." - German Studies Review "Meskill's book is well-documented, particularly its coverage of government initiatives." - Journal of Modern History "The author has presented an informative, clearly structured book and thrown new light on an area of employment policies that had previously been neglected by scholars." - Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und WirtschaftsgeschichteMeskill's enterprise is courageous, and the benefit of analysing concepts and institutional practices of vocational training and labour administration is evident. With such renewed approaches, it is worth revisiting some classic controversies of German historiography. - German History From the Back Cover "Only unity saves the Serbs" is the famous call for unity in the Serb nationalist doctrine. But even though this doctrine was ideologically adhered to by most of the Serb leaders in Croatia and Bosnia, disunity characterized Serb politics during the Yugoslav disintegration and war. Nationalism was contested and nationalist claims to homogeneity did not reflect the reality of Serb politics. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Serb politics and challenges widespread assumptions regarding the Yugoslav conflict and war. It finds that although Slobodan Milosevic played a highly significant role, he was not always able to control the local Serb leaders. Moreover, it adds to the emerging evidence of the lack of importance of popular attitudes; hardline dominance was generally based on the control of economic and coercive resources rather than on elites successfully "playing the ethnic card." It moves beyond an assumption of automatic ethnic outbidding and thus contributes toward a better understanding of intra-ethnic rivalry in other cases such as Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, Nagorno-Karabakh and Rwanda. About the Author David Meskill received a Ph.D. in Modern European History from Harvard University. He has published articles on the Labor Administration, applied psychology, and Alexis de Tocqueville. He is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Dowling College.