The Industrial Science Institute of the German Labour Front (DAF) was founded in 1935. The libraries, archives and statistical institutions of the destroyed labour unions served as the basis of its organization. It answered to the central office of the DAF and was to function as a socio-scientific control over the working class of the Third Reich; it located dangerous factions and separated them out from the resistance movement of the workers, developed compensation plans as a balance to the ever-increasing work-demands, determined anew the relation between salary and work, defined the outlines of an all-encompassing labour union anchored in the Nazi "Community of Accomplishment". Even during the "New European Order" of 1940/41 the lower classes were not to stand aside. With the aid of important socio-technical concepts ("Health Work", unified social insurance, the Reich's prescription for salary etc.) the social problem was to be finally solved in the Third Reich. Extensive sociological experiments were carried out in the occupied countries for the benefit of the occupation-politics of the SS, the administration and the armed forces.
The Institute for Labour Science was destroyed by bombs at the end of the war. This edition of all the available material from the Institute for Labour Science closes a major gap in research and inaugurates a new period of historical investigation into the continuity-problem of German social politics and the labour movement.