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53 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Part truths beget total errors, March 27, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Germans into Nazis (Hardcover)
This book reminds me of the adage about "part-truths that beget total errors." What it has to say about the political process that turned Germans into Nazis is, for the most part, valid and valuable. It's what it leaves out that troubles me and troubles me greatly. Historian Peter Fritzsche maintains that the Nazis prevailed in 1933 not because the German people embraced authoritarianism, militarism, and nationalism (as other right-wing parties did) but because they offered them something the other political parties did not: a "refreshingly moral vision of the nation", and "a political movement that was unabashedly nationalist, forward-looking, and socially inclusive, that recognized the populist claims of constituents without redividing them on the basis of occupation." World War I, says Fritzsche, accelerated the populist yearnings of the German public for political enfranchisement and national solidarity as exemplified, for example, in America's July 4th celebrations. That this yearning was ultimately satisfied by a Hitler rather than a German version of Jefferson requires quite a bit more explaining, however, than we get from this book. Weimar politics, like Tennyson's depiction of Nature, was "red in tooth and claw", full of the rhetoric of ressentiment, humiliation, militancy, spite, and political paranoia-- but don't expect to find any of that here. In this sanitized rendering of events, we learn nothing about the pre-1933 collaboration of the right-wing police and army with the Nazis, how this collaboration intimidated the public, and finally, utterly desensitized them to brutal conduct and brutal speech. Or how the Social Democratic leadership's own decency and naive faith in the German public led them to discourage youthful supporters from standing up to Nazi intimidation in the streets. As for the social reform and political participation that Germans hungered after, nowhere does Fritzsche acknowledge that it was the liberal Germans, disproportionately Jewish, and not the right-wing, who were actually doing something-- a great deal, in fact-- to transform German society in this direction. As early as the 1860s, a German complained in the press, "Why is it necessary that a Jewish woman [Lina Morgenstern] has to manage the soup kitchens: why can't Germans do that; does everything have to be left to the Jews?" But, in fact, reformist causes remained the preserve of liberal Germans in the Weimar period as well. Liberals drafted labor legislation and implemented reforms in the realms of law, social welfare and education. If the right wing, and most of the German public, felt themselves unmoved, and uninterested in participating in these developments, we must ask why. Fritzsche, who I hasten to add is no apologist for the Nazis, fails to explain why Germans condoned and even supported the vile expressions of Nazi antipathy toward Jews and liberals; nor does he offer a convincing explanation of why they were drawn to Nazi "idealism"; his portrait of Nazis as savvy local politicos and grass-roots organizers is short on substance and ultimately unpersuasive. Until 1933, the Nazi's concrete-- as opposed to rhetorical-- accomplishments amounted to little more than organized hooliganism and grandiose spectacle.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Nazi Appeal, March 16, 2009
For over 60 years,people have been debating the appeal of the Nazi Party to the German nation.Did anger over the treaty of Versailles make Germans support Hitler? Was it the effects of the Great Depression? Was it because Germans had little exposure to democracy that they turned to fascism? Was it the Nazi racial views that attracted Germans to Hitler? Is there one answer, probably not? Can one answer possibly explain such a complex situation as to why Germany turned to the Nazis? In Germans into Nazis historian Peter Fritzsche has a provocative thesis.He argues that the appeal of the Nazis was rooted in a strident nationalism that was born in 1914 during the lead up into the Great War.Fritzche asserts that the Kaisers call for a true unity of Germans during the war (BURGFRIENDEN) may have been cynical on Wilhelms behalf, but that was not the way many Germans saw it.They saw it as "shot across the bow" of special interests and an opportunity to create a new Germany without as many class barriers.
The collective experience of total war united many Germans as never before.The hardships of modern conflict(loss of loved ones, the turnip winter,etc) welded many Germans into the Volksgemeinshaft.(the peoples community)When the war ended many Germans looked forward to the republic as a way to fulfill their hopes for a new direction in national life. Fritzsche maintains that various political parties such as the communists,
socialists and various parties on the right did not understand the language of the German masses when it came to national needs.But the Nazis did. They comprehended the energy that was unleashed during the Great War.
and they tapped into it.They rejected old political solutions and suggested new ideas.According to Fritzche "They challenged the authoritarian legacy of the empire, rejected the class- based vision of Social Democrats and Communists, and both honored the solidarity and upheld the chauvinism of the nation at war."This book does not deal with Hitler or anti- semitism, but how Germans across the political spectrum were attracted to the Nazis. It seems that no one reason can explain the rise of the Nazis, but this book is a needed volume in attempting to understand this important topic.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Go along to get along, May 29, 2007
For years I searched for the answer as to why Germany turned her back on the civilized world. I discovered that individual people did it one by one in an attempt to get along, an answer that was much simplier than I had ever suspected. Most people found things they could support the Nazis for doing and many things they disageed with and thats even more true of the German military leaders who benefited from the resurgence of military spending, promotions, greater status, etc. After the death of von Hindenberg no one had the power to remove the madman Hitler from power.
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