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79 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A lucid explanation of the unthinkable, August 14, 2008
This review is from: Life and Death in the Third Reich (Hardcover)
It's never sat well with me--not really--because no one thing can explain or excuse it. Were the German people stupid? Brainwashed? Intrinsically evil? Forced into obeying? Ignorant, and thus brutal? Victims, and thus innocent? Just how DO you descend from the most sophisticated society on earth to the ultimate symbol of evil, all in only a handful of years? I mean, what are the MECHANICS of it?
Mr. Fritzsche answers my nagging questions beautifully and elegantly. He details the conscious, flexible, deliberate and accidental rise of the National Socialist ideal through what, horrifyingly, we must admit was a brilliant manipulation for the German longing for "togetherness". It's aim was simple--to sever the German people from all ties save that to the group, personified by the State, and its technique was relentlessly collective. In the end, says the author, Germans embraced National Socialism from those they perceived to be their brothers, not their betters. Then Fritzsche tells us how it was done.
By focusing on a few key Nazi concepts--and the "glitter words" that activated Pavlavian responses in Germans--the author illustrates how Nazis coaxed otherwise reasonable people into colluding in--and initiating--mass murder. The inescapable conclusion is that Germans really were seduced, even wooed, into destroying themselves. If this dichotomy offends, then so be it: Fritzsche's aim isn't to prove that Germans participated in genocide (which he takes for granted), nor really why. His aim is to uncover how. Dozens of diaries, letters home, bitter jokes and the occasional panicked non-believer's memoir suggest that Nazism was first inflicted on Germans themselves, who in turn unleashed Hell on the world.
"Yes, yes," You say. "But HOW?" Through, for instance, the "Strength Through Joy" campaign (originally named...are you ready for this?..."Strength Through Fear"),which among other things provided people with free holidays. Through exhausting, dehumanizingly cheery Boy Scout-style camps, where indoctrination mixed with social whirl and brutal exercise to produce the interminable, sleep-deprived, unquestioning "We" (and, not incidentally, the techniques in crowd control used in the Holocaust) Through humiliation, chilling social pressure, radio broadcasts, bullying, terror, constant spying by your neighbors, and finally, with the ratcheting up of backround fear to full-blown psychosis.
Writing this review is hard. If I do it wrong, you will think Fritzsche excuses Germans which he never, ever does. This is an urgent and important book, because when I was in school, I was taught only the most rudimentary details: Nazism suddenly "appeared", yet German-ness contained a latent evil. Later in college, I read about Versaille and the Inflation and the Weimar, yet none of these explain the madness of the Thirties and Forties. Not even the socially sanctioned Jew-baiting explains what happened next. I kept thinking, growing up, "What if it happened here? How would I recognize it?"
A survivor of the camps (whose name I'm sorry I forget) stated bitterly, "It took one week to convince the Austrians what it took five years to convince the Germans to do". It's those years I'm interested in. Fritzsche's style is superb--he takes each glitter word and develops it so thorougly that when you finish the "we're just us" section of the book, for instance, you'll almost HEAR the rustle of terrified postcards thrown from cattle cars, begging for help--it's the only logical conclusion.
And when you're finished with this book, the "good German" will mean more than you imagined--not simply a cipher conforming, nor only depravity unleashed, but also an active, frighteningly engaged participant in what he perceived was thunderous history. If this seems archaic or unhelpful in diagnosing evil, I suggest you get out a map and locate a little country called Rwanda.
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating look at the personal appeal of Naziism, October 2, 2008
This review is from: Life and Death in the Third Reich (Hardcover)
I read this book and thought I might write a review of it, but I see that Erica Bell has already written an outstanding review. If you haven't read it yet, read it now. It's right on target and is better than anything I could have written. All I'll try to do is add a few notes to what she said.
The striking thing to me about Fritsche's book is his fairly convincing attempt to explain the appeal that Naziism had to average Germans. I had always imagined the appeal to be based on ignorance, racism, xenophobia, fear, and a desire to feel better about oneself by denigrating others, something like what I imagine to be the appeal of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States.
Surely there was that. Surely it played a significant role, especially in recruiting the brutal thugs in brown shirts who loved to find helpless people whom they could beat up and rob on the street, or loot their houses and stores, without fear of retaliation from the people or the police. But racism, ignorance and thuggery never seemed to be enough to explain the phenomenon. They explain bullies and thugs, but not the millions of ordinary people who would line the streets or fill the stadiums to look with great love and fervor upon Adolf Hitler. They didn't explain the people with joy on their faces shouting Sieg Heil!
If Fritsche is right, and his analysis is certainly plausible to this inexpert reader, the real appeal of Naziism was that it offered ordinary Germans a chance to feel proud of themselves and their country, and to believe in their future. It may seem paradoxical that anyone would be proud of being a Nazi, but it wasn't Naziism _per se_ that they were proud of. They were proud of being Germans and, for the first time since the heady days of 1914, they felt that they belonged to a great community, a community that would take care of its own, a community in which all citizens (except Jews) could fully participate, a community with a bright future.
Like many other European societies, Germany was class ridden and deeply divided before the Nazi era. The old nobility and the newer bourgeoisie held the commanding heights of society. The ordinary people were treated as social inferiors, and especially because of the losses in the first war and the horrors of the years of inflation and then depression, were suffering economically. Millions turned to communism, or to the various small fascist parties. Almost everyone was pessimistic about the future of their country, and pessimistic about their own chances for a decent life.
The Nazis changed that. Nazi politics were not based on the nobility or the bourgeoisie. The Nazi leaders did not come from those classes. The Nazi message was, if you were of the right "race", one of inclusiveness. The Hitler Youth and the Strength Through Joy programs were aimed at ordinary people. The people's car project (Volkswagen), the attempt to make radios available to all and the growth of movies were all aimed squarely at the masses. The Nazis never fully delivered on their promises (vastly more ordinary people in the U.S. had cars and radios, went to movies, and went on vacations), but people believed that the trend was in the right direction.
These developments weren't just aimed at improvements in people's material lives. They were well structured to improve their outlook on life as well, especially by making people feel that they were part of a big movement, a movement aimed at helping them - not the rich, not the nobility, not foreign communist movements, and alas, not Jews.
If I understand Fritsche correctly, the racism and xenophobia that the Nazis promoted were not the early appeal of the movement. The racial nastiness was a kind of subtext, always present, always insistent, always growing, but, at least in the first years, not in the first position in Nazi politics. Once the people were won over, once the opposition had been crushed, once the apparatus of news and education and propaganda had been completely subverted, then it was time for racism to come to the fore and for the full scope of Hitler's madness and megalomania to become manifest.
Fritsche's book is hardly a complete analysis of this phenomenon. There is much that he never discusses at all and much that is treated superficially. There is, for example, no examination of the Nazi leadership, little analysis of the causes of the war, very little on economics, no explanation of how the Nazi Party operated, etc.. This is not, after all, a 2,000 page book. It is a book that concentrates on just a few ideas and a few aspects of Naziism. But it opened my eyes to a new and fruitful understanding of why and how ordinary Germans became Nazis.
I recommend the book.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well Done!, April 15, 2010
This review is from: Life and Death in the Third Reich (Hardcover)
Fritzsche adds more information to the ongoing question regarding the complicity of the German People in their support of the more sordid facets of National Socialism.He maintains a very objective approach throughout,which is a refreshing change from those historians who are out to support their own agendas,and often leave this reader in distaste for their exaggerations and warping.I would recommend this work for both the casual and serious student of the 3rd Reich.A full section of footnotes also lends credence to his work
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