The corporation is implicated in a wide range of activities that are profoundly deleterious to human well-being. The Holocaust, as organized and carried out by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP; the Nazis), is arguably the outstanding example of organized malevolence in modern times. Beginning with the realization that the corporation and the Holocaust are both organizational phenomena, the present research mines a wide range of literature on the Holocaust and the corporation to identify similar practices and then analyzes those practices to discern how they contributed to the Holocaust and may contribute to the various adverse consequences associated with the corporation. Important similarities are identified and analyzed in respect of organization; relationship to unskilled and low-skilled labor; the involvement of professionals, scientists, and engineers; the pervasive use of secrecy and deception; and fascism. These similarities produce their adverse effects both individually and collectively. Collectively, they disempower or eliminate potential countervailing forces and thereby augmented the capacity of the NSDAP, in one case, and may augment the capacity of the corporation, in the other, to carry out destructive acts.
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