Wednesday, April 05, 2006

A Chilling Moment For Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker has writtern numerous books on management and leadership and is a much sought after consultant specializing in strategy and policy for businesses and social sector organizations.

Here is a nauseating anecdote from Drucker's early life.

Early in his career Drucker had been a journalist in Hitler's Nazi Germany. He had been assigned with the job of interviewing the author of a new book that had come out in Germany at the time. It was called Mein Kampf. The author of course was Hitler.

He dutifully read the book in order to conduct research prior to the interview.

When Drucker interviewed Hitler he asked him how it came to be that in the book he talked a lot about power but not once about money. Hitler apparently replied along the following lines: "First you need to get the power. When you have that you find the people with money. Then you kill them. Then you have both".

Apparently Drucker went to all his friends and told them to leave Germany immediately. He was of course Jewish. His friends didn't believe him. They stayed. They died.

Drucker left. Legend has it that Drucker was exiled from Germany because of his views on economics. The truth is that he left because he didn't want he and his wife to be killed. He migrated to United States where today, he is considered the father of modern managemnet.

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