Prestige and Personal Connections in a Bureaucracy of Violence: Promotions of High-Level Officers in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War

• In Event: Empires, States, and the Making of Power II. Building and Unbuilding the State: Elites, Bureaucracies, and the Foundations of Political Authority

Brief Overview

Drawing on an original dataset of top-level promotions in the German Wehrmacht during World War II, this paper examines how and why prestige and social connections remain central to individual careers, even in highly formalized bureaucratic organizations.

Author

• Jan P. Vogler, Aarhus University