Wolf Schäfer
Photo: Annette Hornischer

Professor of History and Associate Dean for International Academic Programs and Services, Stony Brook University, New York

Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow - Class of Fall 2013

Wolf Schäfer is Professor of History and Associate Dean of International Academic Programs at Stony Brook University. Educated at the universities of Marburg, Bonn, King’s College London, Munich, and Bremen (PhD, 1983), he was first a research associate at the Max-Planck-Institute in Starnberg and became professor at the Fachhochschule Darmstadt in the 1980s. After moving to the United States, in 1989, to join Stony Brook’s History Department, he pioneered global history as an alternative to world history and founded the Center for Global & Local History (home of the Long Island History Journal), which he continues to oversee, as well as the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies and its publication, Globality Studies Journal, of which he has remained editor. Schäfer is the author of over eighty articles and nine books. His book Toward Pangaea II: Connected Essays on Global History was published by SUNY Press in 2014.

Project Description

Finalization and Failure: A Comparative Management Study of Big Weapons Programs in World War II

In his Academy project, “Finalization and Failure: A Comparative Management Study of Big Weapons Programs in World War II,” Schäfer explored the functional and dysfunctional governance and management factors likely to make or break large and complex research and development programs. As a case study of science, technology, and management, the book will compare the Manhattan Project to Nazi Germany’s advanced rocket program and nuclear bomb projects. Focusing on the managerial mediators among the governmental, industrial, military, and technoscientific sectors of the two countries during World War II, Schäfer’s investigation will test the hypothesis that the success of the Manhattan Project and relative failure of the German programs can be attributed to the unequal empowerment and performance of management and government. This historical approach to a theoretical question is also relevant for current policy debates about how authoritarian regimes manage science and weapons programs, particularly for understanding how to confront the challenges posed by nuclear proliferation and global climate change.

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