This is a study of the radical peasant trade union which thrived in parts of south and west Germany in the 1920s. The Free Peasantry, as it was known, challenged the authority of the state through food delivery strikes, a separatist putsch which ended in bloodshed.
The Weimar Republic was a turbulent and pivotal period of German and European history and a laboratory of modernity. The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic provides an unsurpassed panorama of German history from 1918 to 1933, offering an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the fascinating history of the Weimar Republic.
This is the first book on the giant Nazi leisure and tourism agency, Strength through Joy (KdF). KdF's low cost cultural events, factory beautification programs, organized sports, and, especially, mass tourism became the primary means by which the Nazi regime mitigated the tension between the investment in rearmament and German consumers' desire for a higher standard of living. Strength through Joy mitigated the sacrifices of the present while its programs present visions of a prosperous future once "living space" was acquired. As an agency open to racially acceptable Germans only, it segregated the regime's victims from the Nazi "racial community."
By the end of the First World War, women's labor was viewed by contemporary observers as fundamental to the survival of family farms in Germany and consequently to the nation's economic and social stability. At the same time, however, the overburdening of farm women sparked increasingly acrimonious conflicts between young hired women, or Mägde, their employers, and state officials. The progressive feminization of agricultural work in Germany during the prewar decades and attempts after the war to prevent young women's flight from family farms is the focus of this new study. Concentrating principally on developments in the Kingdom, later the Freestate, of Saxony, the author highlights the ways that previously invisible historical actors -young rural women- actively shaped state policies: in disputes over work between Mägde and their employers before village magistrates; in the thorny debates over rural social welfare reform and the campaigns to professionalize farm wives and daughters; and in state officials' uneven enforcement of agricultural employment laws and their struggles to maintain the food supply during and after the First World War. The book furthermore challenges established narratives of German history that equate modernity with the industrial and the urban, instead suggesting that rural inhabitants participated actively in the broader debates and crises that defined modernity in the Imperial and Weimar eras, particularly concerning debates over individual rights versus collective national duties, the future health and prosperity of the Volk, and the meanings of Germanness.
In this ground-breaking study, Shelley Baranowski not only explores how and why church-going Protestants in eastern Prussia turned to Nazism in large numbers, but also shows that the rural elite and the church propagated a myth of the stability, the wholesomeness, and the class-harmony--in short, the "sanctity"--of rural life, a myth that was a key component of Nazi propaganda that helped secure support for the Third Reich in rural areas. Of great interest to historians and students of the period as well as anyone interested in how a fringe radical movement gained wide popular support.
It is often assumed that the Weimar Republic was bound to fail due to the harsh terms of the Versailles Settlement. Professor Hiden dispels this simplistic view and shows that it was a complex set of factors which finally brought Hitler to power. This clear and balanced study is now fully revised - for the first time since its publication in 1974 - to take account of the latest research.
“McElligott's impressive mastery of an enormous body of research guides him on a distinctive path through the dense thickets of Weimar historiography to a provocative new interpretation of the nature of authority in Germany's first democracy.” Sir Ian Kershaw, Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield, UK This study challenges conventional approaches to the history of the Weimar Republic by stretching its chronological-political parameters from 1916 to 1936, arguing that neither 1918 nor 1933 constituted distinctive breaks in early 20th-century German history. This book: - Covers all of the key debates such as inheritance of the past, the nature of authority and culture - Rethinks topics of traditional concern such as the economy, Article 48, the Nazi vote and political violence - Discusses hitherto neglected areas, such as provincial life and politics, the role of law and Republican cultural politics
This important addition to modern German studies treats the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich as a continuum, exploring its themes through the 1920s and 1930s without artificial breaks. John Hiden looks at key issues in political, social and economic history, and in international relations. He highlights Germany's potentially constructive role in Europe before Hitler; analyses the country's structural problems; considers the importance of personalities and personal responsibility in the period; and examines the legacy of the Third Reich to postwar Germany. Filled with energy and ideas, the book has an intellectual substance far beyond its relatively modest length.
Research on late nineteenth and early twentieth century German society has concentrated overwhelmingly on life in the cities. By contrast, and despite the fact that almost one third of Germans were still working in agriculture as late as 1914, Germany's rural society remains relatively unexplored. Although historians have begun to correct this imbalance, very few full-length studies of social relations east of the Elba in this period have been published. This book concentrates on social relations in the 1,500 estate villages (Gutsdörfer) of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. 'Social relations' include the chains of command and obedience, the relative legal positions of owner and workers, contractual-relations, economic relations; the mutual economic dependency of estate owners and workforce, as well as the value systems of owners and labourers which informed these relationships. With its focus on both rural elites and workers, this study differs from much other work on rural Germany. For while a number of historians have examined the rural elites, few have chosen to investigate the lower strata of rural society. This book makes use of overlooked autobiographical accounts, statements given by workers at labour exchanges and before military authorities, as well as confiscated letters, jokes and anecdotes to provide greater insight into the perspective of rural workers.
The Weimar Republic provides both a clear historical narrative of this critical period in German history and a detailed analysis of the scholarly research in the field