The beginning student of German economic history, should he happen to read more than one text, may be pardoned a certain sense of confusion. General texts agree that Germany became an industrial power, but there remains a remarkable uncertainty as to when this occurred. “During the period from 1870 to 1914 Germany was transformed from a predominantly agrarian to a predominantly industrial state,” asserts Koppel Pinson. He explicitly dismisses the 1850's as a “prelude,” but Ralph Flenley insists that “the real ‘foundation time’ came earlier, most markedly in the fifties….Not the railways alone but the whole economic framework of modern Germany arose during the period before 1870.” In a recent short synthesis of German economic history, Knut Borchardt warns that “experts still disagree” over the beginning date of the “foreward leap.”

After an agreement between Nazi Labor Front Leader Dr. Robert Ley and Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach on December 8, 1993, providing the necessary organizational background, one of the most curious experiments in National Socialist educational policy was launched. The first Reichsberufswettkampf, or Reich Vocational Contest, brought more than half a million young people3 between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one together and encouraged them to compete against each other in fifteen professional fields, between April 9 and 14 of 1934. At the end of the month, fourteen boys and six girls were summoned to Berlin to be declared “Reich Victors,” in the presence of highest government and party plenipotentiaries.