Swords Into Stock Shares : JUGGERNAUT; The German Way of Business: Why It Is Transforming Europe --and the World, <i> By Philip Glouchevitch (Simon & Schuster: $21; 224 pp.)</i>

After the Holocaust, God punished Germany for its sins with the Wirtschaftswunder : the economic miracle of the 1950s. What left something to be desired from a theological standpoint made perfect geopolitical sense. While the heavy reparations that the Versailles Treaty imposed on Germany after World War I only deepened the resentment that helped nurture Nazism, the stunning revival of the German and Japanese economies after World War II turned former enemies into friends and wiped away the militarist legacy in both countries. Germans and Japanese were simply too busy clearing away rubble to dabble in extremist politics.

In both cases, the martial spirit was subdued and transformed into economic assertion. The corporation provided a safe outlet for strong group feelings that were politically taboo during the occupation and workers willingly made sacrifices for companies that they had once made for the state. War, as always, had its creative uses. The Allied bombing demolished obsolete factories, forced managers to rethink strategies and stimulated creativity in response to acute shortages of raw materials. Thrift induced by postwar austerity provided cheap capital for industry. Misery was the mother of invention.

Given the rhythms of politics and media, it was inevitable that the Japan books would give way to a raft of scare books on Germany. Riding this crest is Philip Glouchevitch’s “Juggernaut: The German Way of Business: Why It Is Transforming Europe--and the World.” The sensational title masks a modest work that exhorts us to pay more attention to Germany: “The point is that the United States can no longer afford to concentrate all its energies on ‘doing something’ about Japan; we ignore Germany at our peril. . . . The German economic model, with its strong emphasis on social concerns, works.”

For Americans, the postwar Japanese economy has seemed far more full of menace and fascination than has its German counterpart. Some of this derives from the opaque, impenetrable nature of Japanese society, which has appealed to the worst Occidental stereotypes of Oriental mystery. Some of it is sheer numbers: Japan’s trade surplus with the U.S. has often been five or six times greater than Germany’s and concentrated in conspicuous consumer areas, such as autos and consumer electronics. Shots of shiny cars rolling off automated assembly lines in Japan frighten Americans precisely because the produce is so familiar.

The German formula has been the opposite of flashy. Glouchevitch portrays an economy of dogged plodders and indefatigable grinds, with a pedantic regard for quality and precision. Traits that once made the German schoolmaster a figure of fun--thoroughness, stolidity, rigidity--are very useful in the modern world economy. One finds little creative, entrepreneurial sparkle in “Juggernaut” but plenty of old-fashioned sweat. The disappointed reader may feel he has made a long journey to the Delphic oracle only to hear it whisper this secret of German success: “Work hard, kid, keep your nose clean, and the rest will take care of itself.”

If German business seems Spartan and colorless, its very drabness is telltale. While American business has chased glamour products and glossy wrappers, Germans have excelled in those unlovely, invisible trades better known to the industrialist than the consumer. They specialize in machines that roll cigarettes, paste bottle labels or grind glass. It is amazing how many specialized niches they have found in the mundane world of machine products.

The German economic miracle belies the rhetoric that governed American finance in the era of hostile takeovers and leveraged buy-outs. Our stock-exchange raiders were supposed to inspire (or terrify) managers to new heights of performance. German managers, in contrast, are largely insulated from shareholders and bound to their banks through a tight, incestuous system of cross share-holdings. Says Glouchevitch: “Both legally and in practice, most German public companies are protected from unfriendly takeovers by hurdles fit only for a pole vaulter.” By American lights, this should lead to corporate rigor mortis as “entrenched” managers ignore shareholders. In fact, it permits German executives to focus on product markets instead of stock markets. In this respect, the German economy seems a throwback to turn-of-the-century America, when the Morgans, Schiffs and other bankers gave captive companies freedom from financial distraction.

The heart of the German economy, Glouchevitch stresses, is the so-called Mittelstand, or medium-sized companies owned by individuals or families. Often immune to stock-market shenanigans, they issue non-voting shares and keep a tight rein on operations. Again, this harks back to an earlier America. German firms tend to be paternalistic, hierarchical and closed to outsiders. Yet this system, if undemocratic, is highly workable, producing patient money that invests in research and plans for the future.

In contrast to our adversarial labor relations, Germany operates by consensus and mutes conflict. Under the social market system, people are lavishly paid for high-caliber work. Glouchevitch notes that the celebrated system of co-determination, with workers on company boards, is a sham. Yet German companies provide benefits that seem remarkably openhanded by American standards. Workers get six weeks of paid vacation to recuperate from 37-hour weeks. It is refreshing to read this while American companies wring their hands about the competitive handicap imposed by social burdens.

Alas, Glouchevitch’s book hits the stores just as the honeymoon is ending, with many Germans now questioning whether they can still afford such luxuries. In the aftermath of unification, they must struggle with inflation, high interest rates and other unaccustomed ills. It may be that “Juggernaut” describes a brief, happy interlude that is already past.

As was the case with Japan, the sudden tide of books on Germany may signal that the phenomenon has peaked. Perhaps just when America feels it has touched bottom, it has actually begun to bob back toward the surface.