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Nazi Seizure of Power

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This is a good book to read in explaining how a democratic society became totalitarian in a span of six months. THe author Allen explains it using the small town of Northeim in Hanover. Northeim was a typical town that weathered the turmoil of the twenties and thirties. In 1932, 66% percent of the population voted for the Nazis. In 1933, the Nazis took over the town administration and basically wiped out any opposition by the SPD or Nationalists. This book explains how the Nazis did it on a small scale. Initial violence, concentration camps, firing of those who held opposite political views, and police raids silenced the opposition. They were so silenced that the town did not get back its freedom till 1945.

This is a fairly long book and centered more toward the academic audience. However it gives a great view of how Germany changed overnight when Hindenburg selected Hitler to be his Chancellor. Democracy died a quick death, even at the local level. A great read for those trying to understand the Nazis.

By tracing the personal histories of the inhabitants of Nordheim and the practical workings of the local Nazi party structures, Allen illustrates the reasons for the sudden and powerful rise to power of the NSDAP in a way that is insightful and memorable. By using such details as excerpts from local newspapers, attendance records of Nazi and non-Nazi events, and memories of the still-living Nordheim residents, Allen is able to give an amazingly detailed and yet concise and easily readable view of the events and feelings that proceeded and stemmed from the Nazi rise to power.

Sheridan uses one community to explain how the Nazis (NSDAP) were able to gain power in an entire country within the democratic system. His exhaustive research of local archives shows how the NSDAP was able to set up an effiecient bureaucracy that simply outworked other parties and spread their message through 1000's of meetings. Extremists (from the right or left) don't always take power through military force - sometimes the open nature of democracies can be used to subvert them, as was the case in Germany in 1933. True, there are many other factors involved, but Sheridan's book provides clear examples that are often overlooked.

First, this should not be your first book on the Third Reich. You need to have a general grasp of the history of Germany from 1918 to 1945. I would recommend The Third Reich Trilogy by Richard Evans: 1)The Coming of the Third Reich, 2)The Third Reich in Power, 3)The Third Reich at War.

But if you do have a general grasp of that period of history, this is a fantastic book that will illuminate just exactly how the Nazis came to power. Unlike so many histories that focus on the macroscopic events, this book is microscopic. It dissects a small town down to individual inhabitants. The author has poured over thousands of documents from the period and interviewed many of the main players (the book is from the 60's).

If you are like me and get annoyed at histories that have no sources or research footnotes; and favour sensationalism and emotionality over facts and logic--then you will find this book refreshing. Allen's conclusions are all backed up. There are charts on voting, unemployment, number of meetings, party donations, memberships, political violence, terrorism, party finances, etc. There are newspaper references, party documents, letters, interviews etc. It is one of the most thoroughly researched intellectually honest popular histories I've run into.

It also accomplishes the hard task of contextualizing behaviour, and making the choices people took understandable from their point of view. From the propertied middle classes fearful of what was occurring in Russia and traumatized by the violence of post WWI when communists took over some cities; to the frustrated, armed, and impoverished returning soldiers conditioned by WWI violence to not abhor killing and fighting; to the powerless workers, looking only for bread. You get a real sense of what was motivating these people to act the way they did.

You also see how the parties operated trying to get and maintain members. Sometimes we forget that Hitler and the Nazis did not proclaim their true intentions to Germany. When they were wooing voters, they did not tell them that Hitler wanted war and to commit genocide. In fact, the Nazi's were masterful at marketing at the local level. They tailored their messages to the specific audiences they were trying to attract. So if they were holding a meeting for workers in a particular location, they would bring in a specific speaker with a specific message. If it was businessmen, the message and speaker would be entirely different (and often entirely contradictory). They would tell whoever they were talking to whatever it was they thought they wanted to hear. And they measured success by the number of people at events and the number of paid party memberships. It is a fascinating lesson in manipulation and lying. You get to understand why 35% of Germans voted Nazi in the last free elections.

He illuminates how daily life changed post 1933 for the average person. How the Nazi party stopped caring about what people wanted to hear and started becoming a top down organization. The nature of social discourse changed fundamentally. Instead of social activities being undertaken voluntarily and because they were fun and of interest to the participants, everything became to be centered on Nazism. As clubs and organizations were Nazified, most disappeared as people stopped having fun at them and began resenting being forced to do things. Block leaders were avoided, heil Hitlers were done unenthusiastically or not done at all, people stopped talking to each other as much and some even stopped going out altogether except when they had to attend party events. Resentment bloomed as capable people were replaced by incompetents and thieves merely because they were long time party members. Allen really gives you a good sense of how daily life became stifling post '33.

The one section that is less than perfect only because it is so short is the war period. Although you do come to understand the fear and desperation of the people as the revenge seeking Russians approach and the 'Germany must be utterly defeated' Brits and Americans intensify their terrorizing carpet bombing of civilians.

In short, this is a unique look at some regular folk in 1925-45 Germany which helps make understandable how the Nazis came to power and what daily life was like for regular people.

Allen concentrates on Northeim, Germany in looking at the transformation that took place from 1922 to 1945. In his approach, key individuals are shown to be the players who brought about the change in thinking in the community. His study offers depth in that regard. In considering these key leaders, he goes on to describe how they influenced the general population to buy into their ideology.

There were points of internal conflict within the organization. The Nazi Party was not a unified whole. Like any human social structure there were different ideas about what should be done and how matters should be approached.

Generally, the public is shown to be apathetic. There wasn't much feeling one way or the other to the average citizen in Northeim. Chronologically, Allen goes on to describe what took place in the town after WWII.

It's easy to gag today at the idea of a people openly electing someone who made anti-Semitism, totalitarianism, and blind conformity public planks of his campaign. What were the Germans thinking when they voted to make Hitler their president? William Sheridan Allen delved into the question using a small German town for a case study.

"Hitler, Goebbels and the other Nazi leaders provided the political decision, ideology, national propaganda, and later, the control over the government that made the revolution possible," White writes. "But it was in the hundreds of localities like Northeim all over Germany that the revolution was made actual. They formed the foundation of the Third Reich."

Located in almost the exact center of Weimar Germany, Northeim was a divided town at the dawn of the 1930s. On one side were ardent Nationalists who craved the orderly, unbowed Germany before it lost World War I. On the other were Socialists, Marxists by identity if not by nature, who at least sang if not believed in a society free of religion and class division. The Socialists were in charge, while opposition from the middle class and from farmers was deep but unfocused. Enter the Nazis, small at first, but quickly growing.

Allen wrote the first edition of his book in 1965, researching newspapers, Nazi documents, and questioning contemporary Northeimers. So raw was the wound that he initially gave the town a fictitious name, "Thalberg". In 1983, he produced a new edition identifying both Northeim and many of its people by their real names.

Though the subtitle promises "The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945", all but a sixth of the text is focused on just four years, 1930-33, the fulcrum point of the Nazi takeover. The National Socialist German Workers Party, as it was formally called, went from "insignificant fringe" to two-thirds of the local electorate. Civil unrest was a principal ingredient, as the violence between Socialists and Communists on one side and Nationalists and Nazis on the other wore everyone down.

Allen offers other factors. Socialist rhetoric annoyed the middle class, and put them off to other innovations of the new Socialist state, like democracy. Right-wing alternative parties were all-too-happy to cede authority to a bunch of street toughs who knew how to get things done. Moderate parties existed in the form of the People's Party and the Catholic Center, but they were too small in Northeim to be factors. Allen also points to the Depression, but makes a muddy case, saying it really didn't impact the middle class economically but nevertheless helped the Nazis build power among the petit bourgeoisie.

Once in, the Nazis were impossible to remove, except by tank. Ironically, Northeimers were already beginning to show signs of buyer regret before Hitler took over in January 1933, and thereafter party loyalty proved desultory. Even the most fanatic began going through the motions. "Propaganda became increasingly a matter of ritual," Allen writes, and details the loss of zeal. But by then the town was so effectively divided, "atomized" as Allen puts it, that there could be no turning back, no rethinking of this mad course.

"The Nazi Seizure" is a dry book, in large part I suspect because it was written originally under cover of pseudonym. For all the interviews Allen conducted, little shows up in the way of quotes, and people are identified more by class, profession, politics, and religion than anything sharper. He was clearly writing to an academic audience, and in that, it is limited.

But Allen's blow-by-blow account of the transformation of Northeim puts you smack at the center of one of history's darkest chapters, and once it gets rolling, it's a hard book to put down.

I found "The Nazi Seizure of Power" compelling and frightening. In my 25-year career as an assignment editor at daily newspapers, I have become familiar with the structure of communities of the size studied in the book. Thanks to the William Allen, suddenly I can see how a minority of radical reactionaries took control of a populace of ordinary, decent people. Add a little more fear and bruised pride to America, I realize with a shock, it could happen here.

>The Nazi Seizure of Power< is a solid history book, good enough for use in a college-history syllabus, which is where I came across it. It is something of an eye-opener. Nazism, i.e. "National Socialist German-worker Party" is as enigmatic at the working level as its name is long, which helps it hoodwink German voters and prove that you can establish a dictatorship as easily with ballots as you can with bullets.
Nazism in "Thalburg," Professor Allen's sample pseudonym city, was never an overnight sensation but the result of tireless effort by legions of party workers, who were ignorant of Nazism's true intentions:
1) A housewife put it clearly: "The ranks of the (Nazis) were filled with young people. The people who joined did so because they were for social justice, or opposed to unemployment."
2) Others joined because it looked as though the Nazis would be victorious, and they hoped to profit.
3) "Most who joined did so because they wanted a hard, sharp, clear leadership. They were disgusted with the internal political strife of parliamentary party politics."

One cannot read >The Nazi Seizure of Power< and not be impressed at the sophisticated organizing technique that the Nazis employed to sway the elections:
1) In the early months of 1930, the (Nazis) held a meeting nearly every week, advertised with such titles as "The German Worker as Interest-slave of Big International Capitalists," or "Saving the Middle Class in the National Socialist State."
2) In newspaper advertisements, Thalburgers were urged to give deeply. "Sacrifice" was the key word.

Before the Nazis could succeed, they had to break the hold of private organizations:
1) There is a proverb, "Two Germans, three clubs." This was almost true of Thalburg where, in 1930, there were no fewer than 161 clubs.
2) There were 21 sports clubs, 47 with an economic or occupational function, 23 religious or charitable societies.
3) With hardly an exception, they followed the town's class lines.

The Nazis also had to abolish distinctions between schools:
1) There were three public primary schools, arranged so that children could also secure religious orientation.
2) Burgerschule 1 was Lutheran; the Katholische Volksschule served Catholic children; Burgerschule 2 was non-denominational.
3) Each school had its own School Advisory Council, elected by the pupils' parents.

The abolition of private or exclusive spaces by the Nazis was a process they called "Gleichschaltung," i.e. linking to one source:
1) Eventually no independent social groups were to exist. All of society would exist whereby each individual related not to his fellow man but only to the State.
2) What social cohesion there had been in the town existed in the club life, and this was destroyed in the early months of Nazi rule.
3) With their social organizations gone and with terror a reality, Thalburgers were isolated from one another. By reducing the people to unconnected social atoms, the Nazis could move the resulting mass in whatever direction they wished.

The Nazi leader in Thalburg was "Kurt Aergeyz," not his real name. Aergeyz was "cynical, ruthless, and brutal." Indeed his name means "ambition" in German:
1) It is possible to construe the actions of Kurt Aergeyz, after he came to power, as expressive of class divisions. Nothing is more difficult than discovering the truth about personal motivation, but many of the actions taken by Aergeyz suggest they were a product of social resentment.
2) Kurt Aergeyz was possibly attempting to triumph over the environment in which he had grown up and which condemned him to the condescension of his social betters.

With an Presidential election coming up, >The Nazi Seizure of Power< is a worthwhile read.

I read this interesting work while researching "Sacred Blood." It is heavy reading on a notoriously heavy subject, but is especially relevant in these troubled times we are currently experiencing around the world. It makes an interesting case to explain, in the specific case of one town, "how could they let this happen?" Just goes to reiterate that while times change, people don't.

This book explains much of went on in that town during that time. After reading this book, I've a much better understanding of what happened and why things happened the way they did. Through the author's writting, you can really see the path developing over the years. I truly learned many new things from this book. If you're interested in this subject, I very much recommend this book for it's information and for it's presentation. It gets a BRAVO from me.