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National Socialism, the Nazi Regime and German Society*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2010

S. J. Salter
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield

Abstract

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Type
Review articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Guides to the literature on Nazism are provided by Aycoberry, P., The Nazi question (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Hildebrand, K., The Third Reich (London, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hiden, J. & J. Farquharson, Explaining Hitler's Germany. Historians and the Third Reich (2nd edn, London, 1989)Google Scholar; Kershaw, I., The Nazi dictatorship. Problems and perspectives of interpretation (2nd edn, London, 1989)Google Scholar.

2 Noakes, J., ‘Social outcasts in the Third Reich’, in Bessel, R. (ed.), Life in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987), pp. 83–96, here p. 83Google Scholar.

3 This is an abridged and poorly translated version of the author's Die Machtergreifung. Der Aufstieg der NSDAP und die Zerstörung der Weimarer Republik (Munich, 1984)Google Scholar. It omits much of Broszat's account of the background to the abortive November 1923 Munich putsch as well as the chronology of the rise of the NSDAP he provides in an appendix to Die Machtergreifung. The latter omission is particularly regrettable given the intended (undergraduate) readership of the translation. The English-language version also contains a number of errors absent in the original: thus, the NSDAP gained 1·4% (not 2·6%) of the vote in Berlin in the May 1928 Reichstag elections (p. 18); the NSDAP won 18·3% (not 18·1%) of the popular vote in the September 1930 Reichstag elections (p. 18) and 37·3% (not 37·8%) in those of July 1932 (p. 83); the Versailles treaty was ratified by the German government on 28 June 1919 rather than I January 1920 (p. 45) - it came into force on 10 January 1920; Funk succeeded Schacht as Reich economics minister in 1937 rather than 1939 (p. 98); footnote 17, p. 117 muddles Otto Braun (the social democratic ministerpresident of Prussia) with Magnus von Braun (the Reich minister of agriculture in the von Papen cabinet); and so on. German terms with which students are unlikely to be familiar (völkische, Mittelstand, Schutzpolizei, bündische, Dolchstosslegende, etc.), remain untranslated. The inelegance of the translation also impedes understanding (for example, the account of the high-political intrigues of spring 1932 given on p. 114 creates the impression that Papen regarded Schleicher as an ideal replacement for Chancellor Brüning: in fact, it was Schleicher who was promoting Papen rather than vice versa). Sentences such as ‘Yet even at the time of its formation, this “Grand Coalition” practically overtaxed the capacity of the parties involved in it to keep within the ranks’ (p. 71) and ‘Ultimately he found himself sitting between all political stools’ (p. 112) should not have survived proof-reading by a native speaker of English.

4 Hamilton, R. F., Who voted for Hitler? (Princeton, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Childers, T., The Nazi voter. The social foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919–1933 (Chapel Hill & London, 1983), pp. 255–6;Google ScholarFalter, J. W., ‘Unemployment and the radicalisation of the German electorate 1928–1933: an aggregate data analysis with special emphasis on the rise of national socialism’, in Stachura, P. D. (ed.), Unemployment and the great depression in Weimar Germany (London 1986), pp. 187208;CrossRefGoogle ScholarChilders, T., ‘The limits of national socialist mobilization: the elections of 1932 and the fragmentation of the Nazi constituency’, in Childers, T. (ed.), The formation of the Nazi constituency 1919–1933 (London & Sydney, 1986), pp. 232–59, here p. 241Google Scholar.

6 Childers, , Nazi voter, p. 268Google Scholar.

7 Ibid. On the fragmentation of the liberal parties’ constituencies, see Jones, L. E., German liberalism and the dissolution of the Weimar party system (Chapel Hill &; London, 1988)Google Scholar.

8 Kater, M. H., The Nazi party. A social profile of members and leaders, 1919–1945 (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar

9 ‘Germany’ in Mühlberger, Detlev (ed.), The social basis of European fascist movements (London, New York & Sydney, 1987), pp. 40139, here p. 96Google Scholar.

10 Ibid. p. 123.

11 Ibid. p. 124.

12 Bessel, R., Political violence and the rise of Nazism. The stormtroopers in eastern Germany 1925–1934 (New Haven and London, 1974)Google Scholar; Fischer, C., Stormtroopers. A social, economic and ideological analysis, 1929–35 (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

13 During the late 1920s, the paramilitary organization loyal to the Republic and associated with the SPD, the Reichsbanner, had a membership in excess of one million; whilst the conservative nationalist Stahlhelm could muster almost 500,000 members. By contrast, the highest plausible estimate of SA membership in autumn 1929 was 45,000. Reiche p. 79.

14 Ibid. p. 224.

15 Ibid. p. 142.

16 Fischer, , Stormtroopers, p. 224Google Scholar.

17 This point is also brought out clearly in Bessel, R., ‘Political violence and the Nazi seizure of power’, in Bessel, (ed.), Life in the Third Reich, pp. 115, p. 15Google Scholar.

18 Reiche, pp. 42f, 127ff.

19 Mommsen, H., ‘The breakthrough of the national socialists as a mass movement in the late Weimar Republic’ and ‘The failure of the Weimar republic and the rise of Hitler’, in Laffan, M. (ed.), The burden of German history 1919–45 (London, 1988), pp. 103–15 and 116–30Google Scholar.

20 Neumann, F., Behemoth. The structure and practice of national socialism (London, 1942). P.Google ScholarHüttenberger, ,‘Nationalsozialistische Polykratie’, in Geschichtt und Gesellschaft, II (1976), no. 4, pp. 417–42Google Scholar returns to Neumann's formulation. It also informs the analysis offered in Kershaw, dictatorship, ch. 3.

21 Müller, p. 29.

22 Ibid. p. 30.

23 Hayes, p. xviii.

24 Ibid. p. xvii.

25 Ibid. p. xix.

26 Ibid. p. 65.

27 Ibid. p. 5.

28 Ibid. p. 79.

29 Ibid. p. 80.

30 Ibid. p. 183.

31 Ibid. pp. 184–5.

32 Ibid. pp. 172–3.

33 Ibid. p. 216.

34 Ibid. pp. 316–17.

35 Ibid. p. 317.

36 Ibid. p. 323.

37 Ibid. pp. 366–7.

38 Seebold, G.-H., Ein Stahlkonzern im Dritten Reich. Der Bochumer Verein 1927–1945 (Wuppertal, 1981)Google Scholar; Wisotzky, K., Der Ruhrbergbau im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf, 1983)Google Scholar; Mollin, G., Montankonzerne und ‘Drittes Reick’. Der Gegensatz zwischen Monopolindustrie und Befehlswirtschaft in der deutschen Rüstung und Expansion 1936–1944 (Göttingen, 1988)Google Scholar.

39 Hayes, p. 193.

40 Geyer, M., ‘The Nazi state reconsidered’ in Bessel, (ed.), Life in the Third Reich, pp. 5768Google Scholar.

41 Noakes, , ‘Social outcasts’, in Bessel, (ed.), Life in the Third Reich, p. 86Google Scholar. Noakes offers a fuller account of the introduction of the law in ‘Nazism and eugenics: the background to the Nazi sterilization law of 14 July 1933’ in Bullen, R. J. et al. (eds.), Ideas into politics (London, 1984), pp. 7594Google Scholar.

42 Standard treatments of the sterilization and ‘euthanasia’ programmes are: Klee, E., ‘Euthanasie’ im MS-Staat (Frankfurt, 1983)Google Scholar; Bock, G., Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus (Opladen, 1986)Google Scholar; Schmuhl, H.-W., Rassenhygiene, Nationalsocialismus, Euthanasie (Göttingen, 1987).Google ScholarNoakes, J. & Pridham, G. (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945 (3 vols., Exeter, 19831988), III, pp. 9971048Google Scholar, contains a valuable collection of documents in translation on die ‘euthanasia’ programme.

43 This debate may be approached through Broszat, M., ‘Hider und die Genesis der “Endlösung“’, in Vierteljahrschefte für Zeitgeschichte, XXV (1977), pp. 737–75;Google ScholarBrowning, C., Fateful months. Essays on the emergence of the final solution (New York and London, 1985)Google Scholar; Hirschfeld, G. (ed.), The policies of genocide (London, 1986); andGoogle ScholarFleming, G., Hitler and the final solution (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. Kershaw, Nazi dictatorship ch. 5 is the best guide to the current state of debate. A very full selection of documents in translation is available in Noakes, & Pridham, (eds.) Nazism 1919–1945, III, pp. 10491208Google Scholar.

44 Kershaw, I., ‘Hitler and the Germans’, in Bessel, (ed), Life in the Third Reich, pp. 4156Google Scholar. See also the fuller account given in Kershaw, I., The ‘Hitler myth’. Image and reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar.

45 Ibid. p. 54.

46 Ibid. p. 47.

47 Broszat, M., Henke, K.-D. & Woller, H. (eds.), Von Stalingrad zur Währungsreform. Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland (Munich, 1989)Google Scholar, as its title suggests, sees the cumulative experience of the longer period 1943–8 as constitutive of this caesura. But see the critical remarks of Winkler, H. A. (‘Sozialer Umbruch zwischen Stalingrad und Währungsreform?’, in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, XVI [1990], no. 3, pp. 403–9)Google Scholar who argues that ‘the formula “from Stalingrad to the currency reform” obscures the significance of the epochal year 1945. During the last year of war, [the degree of] social change became so extensive as to enable one to speak of a social upheaval’ (p. 409).

48 Peukert, D. J. K., Inside Nazi Germany. Conformity, opposition and racism in everyday life (London, 1987). PP. 1425Google Scholar. Representative of this approach are: Beck, J. et al. (eds.), Terror und Hoffnung in Deutschland 1933–1945 (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1980)Google Scholar; Peukert, D. & Reulecke, J. (eds.), Die Reihen fast geschlossen. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus (Wuppertal, 1981)Google Scholar; Niethammer, L. (ed.), Lebensgeschichte und Sozialkultur im Ruhrgebiet 1930–1960 (3 vols., Berlin1985)Google Scholar. Despite its title, and the laudatory comments by Willy Brandt on its dust-jacket, Engelmann, B., In Hitler's Germany. Everyday life in the Third Reich (London, 1988)Google Scholar contributes nothing to our knowledge of the ‘history of everyday life’.

49 Peukert, , Inside Nazi Germany, p. 25Google Scholar.

50 Herbert, U., ‘Good times, bad times: memories of the Third Reich’, in Bessel, (ed.), Life im the Third Reich, pp. 97–110, here p. 101Google Scholar.

51 This point is discussed in Kershaw, Nazi dictatorship, ch. 8; and was further addressed in his May 1991 Queen's University, Belfast Wiles Lectures on ‘Nazism and German history’.

52 Fundamental here remains Broszat, M., The Hitler state (London, 1981).Google ScholarFrei, N., Der Führerstaat. Nationalsozialistische Herrsckafi 1933 bis 1945 (Munich, 1987) andGoogle ScholarKershaw, I., Hitler (London, 1991)Google Scholar are recent accounts which stress this analysis of the regime and of Hitler's place in it.