In the years preceding publication of this book in 1986 much progress was made in identifying the social sources of support for Hitler’s NSDAP and in determining the tactics employed by the party to mobilise its constituency at grass roots level. It has emerged that the Nazi’s roots were far more diverse than previously assumed, extending beyond the lower middle class to encompass both the affluent bourgeoisie and the working class. This book collects together original studies which represent a distillation of some of the contemporaneous research.
In the years preceding publication of this book in 1986 much progress was made in identifying the social sources of support for Hitler's NSDAP and in determining the tactics employed by the party to mobilise its constituency at grass roots level. It has emerged that the Nazi's roots were far more diverse than previously assumed, extending beyond the lower middle class to encompass both the affluent bourgeoisie and the working class. This book collects together original studies which represent a distillation of some of the contemporaneous research.
In the years preceding publication of this book in 1986 much progress was made in identifying the social sources of support for Hitler’s NSDAP and in determining the tactics employed by the party to mobilise its constituency at grass roots level. It has emerged that the Nazi’s roots were far more diverse than previously assumed, extending beyond the lower middle class to encompass both the affluent bourgeoisie and the working class. This book collects together original studies which represent a distillation of some of the contemporaneous research.
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.
This collection of essays by leading scholars in their fields provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey of Holocaust historiography available. Covering both long-established historical disputes as well as research questions and methodologies that have developed in the last decade's massive growth in Holocaust Studies, this collection will be of enormous benefit to students and scholars alike.
Lisa Pine's Hitler's 'National Community' explores German culture and society during the Nazi era and analyses how this impacted upon the Germany that followed this fateful regime. Drawing on a range of significant scholarly works on the subject, Pine informs us as to the major historiographical debates surrounding the subject whilst establishing her own original, interpretative arc. The book is divided into four parts. The first section explores the attempts of the Nazi regime to create a Volksgemeinschaft ('national community'). The second part examines men, women, the family, the churches and religion. The third section analyses the fate of those groups that were excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft. The final section of the book considers the impact of the Nazi government upon German culture, in particular focusing on the radio and press, cinema and theatre, art and architecture, music and literature. This new edition includes historiographical updates throughout, an additional chapter on the early Nazi movement and brand new primary source excerpt boxes and illustrations. There is also expanded material on key topics like resistance, women and family, men and masculinity and religion. A crucial text for all students of Nazi Germany, this book provides a sophisticated window into the social and cultural aspects of life under Hitler's rule.
In Drunk on Genocide, Edward B. Westermann reveals how, over the course of the Third Reich, scenes involving alcohol consumption and revelry among the SS and police became a routine part of rituals of humiliation in the camps, ghettos, and killing fields of Eastern Europe. Westermann draws on a vast range of newly unearthed material to explore how alcohol consumption served as a literal and metaphorical lubricant for mass murder. It facilitated "performative masculinity," expressly linked to physical or sexual violence. Such inebriated exhibitions extended from meetings of top Nazi officials to the rank and file, celebrating at the grave sites of their victims. Westermann argues that, contrary to the common misconception of the SS and police as stone-cold killers, they were, in fact, intoxicated with the act of murder itself. Drunk on Genocide highlights the intersections of masculinity, drinking ritual, sexual violence, and mass murder to expose the role of alcohol and celebratory ritual in the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Its surprising and disturbing findings offer a new perspective on the mindset, motivation, and mentality of killers as they prepared for, and participated in, mass extermination. Published in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
As historians rediscover human society to be as much about desire, fantasy, and irrationality as it is about interest, reality, and reason, the history of psychoanalytic thought takes on an increasing significance. Its growth and interconnection with other fields appealed to the eclectic and holistic interests of historians so much so that the term "psychohistory" was coined, admiringly, ambivalently, or perjoratively. The methodological intersection of psychology and history also helped move us toward a more inclusive social history through investigation of the institutional history of medical sciences of the mind.Treating Mind and Body examines the recent history of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and medicine in Germany through a series of original essays by Geoffrey Cocks. The first section, "Psychotherapy," analyzes the history of psychotherapy in the Third Reich and includes such essays as "The Professionalization of Psychotherapy in Germany" and "The Nazis and C.G. Jung," which examines Jung's association with the Nazi regime and the rift between Jungians and Freudians.Section two, "Psychoanalysis," considers the repression of memory evident among German psychoanalysts, a more disturbing historical reality than the traditional view of a Nazi destruction of psychoanalysis. Essays include "Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Germany Since 1939," as well as a discussion of Heinz Kohut's "self psychology" in light of Kohut's life experience in Austria and America. In section three, Cocks treats medicine, the history of professions, and the increasing awareness among historians of the place of medicine hi Nazi plans and projects. Essays include "Jews and Medicine in Modern German Society" and "The Nuremberg Doctor's Trial and Medicine in Modern Germany."As a historian of Germany, psychoanalysis, and medicine, Cocks's writings reflect an abiding interest in the intersections of psychology and history. To his selection of previously published essays he adds a new introduction, placing the essays in newer, richer contexts. This book will be of interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists, as well as those in the fields of medicine, history, and sociology.
As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum, or living space, in Eastern Europe and the United States’s westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny. The peoples of Eastern Europe were, he said, his “redskins,” and for his colonial fantasy of a “German East” he claimed a historical precedent in the United States’s displacement and killing of the native population. Edward B. Westermann examines the validity, and value, of this claim in Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars. The book takes an empirical approach that highlights areas of similarity and continuity, but also explores key distinctions and differences between these two national projects. The westward march of American empire and the Nazi conquest of the East offer clear parallels, not least that both cases fused a sense of national purpose with racial stereotypes that aided in the exclusion, expropriation, and killing of peoples. Westermann evaluates the philosophies of Manifest Destiny and Lebensraum that justified both conquests, the national and administrative policies that framed Nazi and U.S. governmental involvement in these efforts, the military strategies that supported each nation’s political goals, and the role of massacre and atrocity in both processes. Important differences emerge: a goal of annihilation versus one of assimilation and acculturation; a planned military campaign versus a confused strategy of pacification and punishment; large-scale atrocity as routine versus massacre as exception. Comparative history at its best, Westermann’s assessment of these two national projects provides crucial insights into not only their rhetoric and pronouncements but also the application of policy and ideology “on the ground.” His sophisticated and nuanced revelations of the similarities and dissimilarities between these two cases will inform further study of genocide, as well as our understanding of the Nazi conquest of the East and the American conquest of the West.
