What did the Nazis inform the readership of their national newspaper about before 1933? How did they portray the origins and development of the Nazi Party and its specialist organisations at the micro and macro level before the Nazi seizure of power in 1933? What type of propaganda did the Nazis use before 1933 to secure support from specific elements of German society, such as the working class, the peasantry, the urban Mittelstand, and women? What were the main themes of Nazi propaganda projected in its official newspaper before 1933? This study provides the reader with a detailed insight into the content of the Völkischer Beobachter or 'Peoples' Observer', through the use of speeches, reports, articles and various other types of material taken from the Nazi Party's official national newspaper.
No part of the Nazi movement contributed more to Hitler's success than the Sturmabteilung (SA)—the notorious Brown Shirts. Bruce Campbell offers the first in-depth study in English of the men who held the three highest ranks in the SA. Organized on military lines and fired by radical nationalism, the Brown Shirts saw themselves as Germany's paramilitary saviors. Campbell reveals that the homogeneity of the SA leadership was based not on class or status, but on common experiences and training. Unlike other investigations of the Nazi party, The SA Generals and the Rise of Nazism focuses on the military and political activities of the Brown Shirts to show how they developed into SA Leaders. By tracing the activities, both individual and collective, of these men's adult lives through 1945, Campbell shows where members acquired the experience necessary to build, lead, and administer the SA. These men were instrumental in creating the Nazi concept of "political soldiering," combining military organization with political activism. Campbell's enlightening portrait of the SA, its history, and its relationship to the overall Nazi movement reveals how the organization's leaders reshaped the SA over time to adapt to Germany's changing political concerns.
When originally published in 1991, this book was the first systematic, detailed evaluation of the social structure of the Nazi Party in several regions of Germany during its so-called Kampfzeit phase. Based on extensive archival material, much of it left untouched since the end of the war until Detlef Mühlberger uncovered it, the book demonstrates that the Nazi Party and its major auxiliaries, the SA and the SS mobilized support which was remarkably heterogeneous in social terms. The author reveals that in addition to followers from the middle and upper social classes the Nazi Party enjoyed strong support among the lower class and it was indeed, as it claimed to be a people’s party, or Volkspartei.
No dictator can effectively govern a nation on his own. This was certainly the case with Adolf Hitler, who had little time for or interest in the day-to-day regional administration of the Nazi Party. For that purpose, he appointed his most loyal, charismatic, and brutal subordinates: The Little Hitlers , officially known as Gauleiters. In this third volume of a series begun in 2012, Michael Miller and Andreas Schulz present, in meticulous detail, the lives, careers, and crimes of 37 such men. Included are several whose wartime career paths took them outside of their home provinces and led to widespread oppression and terror outside the borders of the Reich. Among these were Fritz Sauckel, who presided over the roundup of millions for slave labor in the Reich, Josef Terboven who oppressed the people of Norway with uncompromising brutality for five years, and Gustav Simon who ruthlessly Germanized Luxembourg. Perhaps most notorious of all was Julius Streicher, whose virulent attacks- in writing and at the podium- made him the unofficial face of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.
The first book-length presentation on the social origins of the prewar SS leadership, this volume offers a complete picture of the men who, between 1925 and 1939, joined the vanguard of National Socialism and rose to the rank of SS-Führer. Herbert Ziegler reveals that the Black Order was composed of people from all walks of life. Young Gymnasium and university graduates rubbed elbows with former gardeners, mechanics, and office clerks, while "old fighters" of the pre-1933 Nazi movement climbed the ladder of SS ranks alongside those who did not find their enthusiasm for Hitler's new order until after the Nazi seizure of power. Within the confines of Heinrich Himmler's new knighthood was created a people's community in microcosm, furnishing many a recruit a vehicle for upward social mobility. Moving beyond earlier explanations of who provided the support for National Socialism, Ziegler describes practices within the SS that were akin to a democracy of personnel selection and that resulted, by 1939, in a leadership corps characterized by social heterogeneity rather than homogeneity. Taking advantage of the detailed information contained in the thousands of SS personnel files located at the Berlin Document Center, and using the tools of statistical analysis, he also probes the connections between social reality and the ideological credos and promises of the Third Reich. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This work contains amended versions of a number of pioneering articles on the social contours of the membership of the Nazi Party published by the authors in the 1980s, added to which are new studies examining the social background of members of the Nazi Party recruited in a rural region, a university town, and in a city.
Before seizing power the Nazi movement assembled an exceptionally broad social coalition of activists and supporters. Many were working class, but there remains considerable disagreement over the precise size and structure of this constituency and still more over its ideology and politics. An indispensable work for scholars of interwar Germany and Nazism in general.
Introduction: a night of violence -- Turmoil in post-war Germany and the origins of the Nazi SA -- Stormtrooper street politics: mobilization in times of crisis -- The SA cult of youth and violence in the Weimar Republic -- Terror, excitement, and frustration -- The "Röhm purge" and the myth of the homosexual Nazi -- The transformation of the SA between 1934 and 1939 -- Streetfighters into farmers? The SA and the "Germanization" of the European east -- Stormtroopers in the Second World War -- SA diplomats and the Holocaust in Southeastern Europe -- "Not guilty": the legacy of the SA in Germany after the Second World War -- Conclusion: the SA and National Socialism