Pamela E. Swett’s research while affiliated with McMaster University and other places

Starting in 2009 with Life and Death in the Third Reich, Peter Fritzsche has written several books that weave together first-person accounts with more traditional sources to help us better understand what life was like in Germany and Europe during the years of Nazi domination. There has always been a literary quality to Fritzsche’s scholarly writing. The addition of the diaries and letters—Ego-Dokumente, as German scholars call them—over the last twelve years has allowed him to explore more deeply the emotions of those living at the time: from the anguish of the men and women hunted by the authorities to the self-satisfaction enjoyed by those who wielded power and the civilians who aided them. In Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich, Fritzsche tackles Hitler’s first one hundred days in power, January 30, 1933, until May 9, 1933. There is plenty to cover in that short time span, including the imprisonment, torture, and murder of political opponents; the burning of the Reichstag; a federal election and the passage of the Enabling Act at the beginning and end of March; and the first national boycott of Jewish businesses and the removal of Jews from the civil service in April, to name a few key themes. The first one hundred days wraps up at the start of May, marked by the conversion of the traditional May Day celebrations into the Day of National Labour. The author may have been encouraged to examine these months because of growing anxiety about the state of democracy in the world and especially in the United States, but Trump is not lurking here as obviously as some readers might expect. The focus remains firmly on everyday Germans and the ways they responded to and participated in these events, which Fritzsche argues fundamentally reordered German political culture by the time summer arrived.

In Weimar and Nazi Germany, capitalism was hotly contested, discreetly practiced, and politically regulated. This volume shows how it adapted to fit a nation undergoing drastic changes following World War I. Through wide-ranging cultural histories, a transatlantic cast of historians probes the ways contemporaries debated, concealed, promoted, and racialized capitalism. They show how bankers and industrialists, storeowners and commercial designers, intellectuals and politicians reshaped a controversial economic order at a time of fundamental uncertainty and drastic rupture. The book thus sheds fresh light on the strategies used by Hitler and his followers to gain and maintain widespread support. The authors conclude that National Socialism succeeded in mobilizing capitalism's energies while at the same time claiming to have overcome a system they identified with pernicious Jewish influences. In so doing, the volume also speaks to the broader issue of how capitalism can adapt to new times.

In Weimar and Nazi Germany, capitalism was hotly contested, discreetly practiced, and politically regulated. This volume shows how it adapted to fit a nation undergoing drastic changes following World War I. Through wide-ranging cultural histories, a transatlantic cast of historians probes the ways contemporaries debated, concealed, promoted, and racialized capitalism. They show how bankers and industrialists, storeowners and commercial designers, intellectuals and politicians reshaped a controversial economic order at a time of fundamental uncertainty and drastic rupture. The book thus sheds fresh light on the strategies used by Hitler and his followers to gain and maintain widespread support. The authors conclude that National Socialism succeeded in mobilizing capitalism's energies while at the same time claiming to have overcome a system they identified with pernicious Jewish influences. In so doing, the volume also speaks to the broader issue of how capitalism can adapt to new times.

The Weimar Republic (1918–33) was a pivotal period of German and European history and a laboratory of modernity. This handbook is a comprehensive reference book presenting the key findings of recent research on Weimar Germany in the most concise and accessible way. Weimar is often presented as a warning from history, and as such invoked time and time again when challenges of democratic governance are debated. But the chapters of the Handbook demonstrate that Weimar’s history is more than just the lead-up to the Third Reich or a crisis-ridden democracy: It was a period of bold experimentation in politics, society, and culture. Written by an international team of leading experts, the Handbook’s thirty-three chapters provide cutting-edge synthesis of all key topics in the history of Germany’s first democracy, covering social, political, economic, and cultural history with a focus on the historical openness of the period. The Handbook also includes a section with chronological chapters on key developments in the political sphere. Each of the chapters can be read on its own. In addition to established topics, the book includes crucial areas of Weimar history that are often forgotten. These cover the relevance of religion, the strength of pro-republican groups, federalism and nationalism, the significance of rural communities and the agricultural sector, as well as the importance of mass and visual cultures for Weimar contemporaries. Navigating Weimar Germany’s complex and contradictory history is made easier by the sound compass this Handbook provides to all readers interested in this turbulent period.

Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany - edited by Elizabeth Harvey July 2019

Cambridge Core - Twentieth Century European History - Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany - edited by Elizabeth Harvey

The introduction of the office of the Bundestag's military ombudsman through a 1957 amendment to West Germany's Basic Law was and remains today an important manifestation of the Bundeswehr's Innere Führung. This reform concept was aimed at transforming the new military into a force that respected the individual rights of the â citizen in uniform' and the rule of law in the young democratic state. The ombudsman was to be an independent check on whether these goals were being met. His office, therefore, held practical and symbolic value as a tool for parliamentary oversight of the military and therein the extension and protection of democratic values and practices in the Federal Republic. In the summer of 1964, the current ombudsman, Hellmuth Heye, released a series of three articles in the illustrated magazine Quick claiming that Innere Führung was under threat and with it Germany's democracy. Reaction to the articles was swift and vociferous. While officials in Bonn universally disavowed the criticism, the West German public supported Heye in thousands of letters to the media. The article examines this controversy and argues that while concern was widespread, there was little consensus about a solution. Military training that was too 'hard' harkened back to the dark days of the Wehrmacht. Training that was too 'soft' created weak, selfish men. The welfare-supported, consumption-driven society was seen as much at fault as an unreformed military. Ultimately, the article examines the quest for a healthy male who could serve as both a democratic citizen and a soldier. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society. All rights reserved.

This chapter is an introduction to some of the key concerns surrounding consumer culture in Nazi Germany. Structured chronologically, it examines the Volksprodukte (‘People's Products’) and Strength through Joy tourism opportunities supported by the regime. It also discusses the goals of the private consumer goods sector during the early years of the dictatorship and during the Four Year Plan and war. Developments in advertising and market research, as well as rationing, are introduced. Ultimately, the essay argues that in general the enticements to ‘Aryan’ Germans to consume reflected trends begun during the Weimar Republic and seen elsewhere in Europe. It also maintains that despite calls for a national community or Volksgemeinschaft, class difference continued to shape individuals’ identities as consumers and corporate efforts to sell goods and services.