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Germans into Nazis

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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.

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.

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.

The books title, GERMANS INTO NAZIS implies an unasked question - how did this happen? The answer, according to Peter Fritzsche, is quite straightforward. First of all, it had nothing to do with any of the following:

> Bitterness over the Versailles Treaty

> The inadequacy of the Republic and the ineffectiveness of Hindenburg as President

> Economic despair associated with the Inflationszeit or hyperinflation crisis

> The Great Depression

> Anti-Semitism

No, none of these. Fritzsche says "it should be stated clearly that Germans became Nazis because they wanted to become Nazis and because the Nazis spoke so well to their interests and inclinations." The removal of anti-semitism as a motivator would seem to contradict Daniel Goldhagen's thesis in HITLERS WILLING EXECUTIONERS, where it is argued that persecuting Jews was the raison d'etre for Nazis. Also, Ian Kershaw in HUBRIS, in studying the motivating factors in the life stories of 581 Nazi party members, found that less than 75 were driven by anti-semitism. If Fritzsche is correct and the interests and inclinations that caused Germans to metamorphose into Nazis do not include social and economic factors, then what else is there? Answer - politics.

The political organization, the devotion to the cause, the energy, and the message of the Nazis; all are shown to have had significant appeal to the populous. The Nazis were organized if nothing else. They held 2,370 public meetings throughout Germany in 1925 and by 1929 they had 3,400 party branches across the country. Their ideological appeal was based on their portrayal of themselves as "a party that was constructive, that would move forward and bring Germans together in a militant Volksgemeinschaft" (community of people).

Fritzsche is fairly dry and prosaic in the manner in which he goes about making the case that it was the political aspirations of the people that the Nazis most appealed to. Yet he marshals sufficient evidence to be convincing.

What role did Hitler play in all of this? You'll have to read about that elsewhere as Fritzsche has very little to say about him in the entire book. This seemed strange at first but it's in keeping with a truism that the great Hitler biographers have recognized. To understand Hitler you have also to look at German society. Fritzsche does not say as much, but his books emphasis on the power of politics in German society is testimony enough to that fact.

this was a hard book to put down; for a history buff and self-described Germany "expert" especially, it is a must-read.

Germans into Nazis provides valuable insight into the mindset of the average German in the early years of the past century. Historically speaking, the author reminds the reader of contemporary mindsets of different groups of Germans at various timelines. For example, during the first year of war in 1914 Kaethe Kollwitz, a prominent sculptor/artist/socialist, through her diary related the sudden feeling of "a sense of duty and responsibility to the Fatherland" as her son served, and was soon killed, later that year. She herself was astonished at her own high-minded sentiments.

Another narrative of the exhortation to housewives to save food scraps..."everything from bones to fruit pits" Only in meticulous, record-keeping Germany would even a small city such as Barmen (now part of Wuppertal) register the PRECISE amount of cherry and plum pits (7,815 kilograms, over eight tons!) collected for crushing into cooking oil DURING 1915-1916. No doubt the reader can only imagine if the cherry pits had been collected separately from the plum pits there would have been separate statistics for each fruit pit!

Flash forward to 1933-1945 and one can better understand the Nazis to carry on with the recording of detailed minutia in neat orderly ledger books regardless of what horrors might be involved in being duly recorded.

Many times the book also surveys the political landscape of Germany in the Weimar Republic years, and many readers will be surprised to learn that often many more Germans protested AGAINST war than agitated for, or attended pro-war rallies. The well-covered, near-civil war atmosphere and the left-right schism of the 1918-1920 period is especially enlightening. Many statistics and excellent footnotes expound on and allow further research for the true academic student of Germanic history. At a mere 269 pages you will wish you could have more!

An academic read about how Germany became Nazi Germany in 1933. Some people just seem to think that Germany became a right wing country in 1933, and the author (a good Illini) shows that there was real political evolution from 1914 (the advent of the war) to 1933. Germans were becoming less class conscious and more nationalistic. The Nazis had broad appeal, as the regular parties squandered their political capital. The Nazis were socially progressive, and honored working people. They were nationalistic. They appealed across all social groupings. They were also anti Semitic-as many Germans were. The result is that Germany fell into the grip of the Nazis and the world suffered.

This is a good book from a history professor. If anybody wonders why Germany became what it became, this book has solid knowledge of why it happened.

This book describes the history of how German nationalism and socialism form National Socialism. This history starts in 1914 and even before that with the birth of Germany where "Germany always looked very different to Bavarians, Saxons, and Prussians, or, for that matter, to farmers, workers, and schoolteachers or to men and women." The story ends with Hitler and his National Socialist Workers Party grabbing power: "The Nazis did not win by being similar to but by being different from their competitors in the bourgeois fold. As Hitler stated again and again: - "The nationalists on the right lacked social awareness, the socialists on the left lacked national awareness" - ". With other words, the National Socialists were socialists with national awareness. The story between the beginning and the end goes way far beyond the Traitee of Versailles. It is a story that needs to be understood by anyone who doesn't want similar consequences of the policies of the German National Socialist Workers Party to happen again.