Germans into Nazis

Why did the Germans usher Hitler into power in 1933? Peter Fritzche’s book Germans into Nazis takes a fresh look at the question. Published in 1998, the book sets out an explanation that seems especially topical and urgent now, given subsequent trends in Western politics.Fritzsche is Professor of History at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has published widely on European and especially German history. His thought-provoking book attempts to answer the question by casting aside the conventional explanations – Versailles, the Depression, reparations – and looking at the dynamics of division in a society and the desire for unity.Fritzsche’s thesis is that the First World War was crucial to the rise of Nazism, but not in the way that has been assumed. Conventional explanations have focused on the humiliation of the Versailles treaty, territorial losses and reparations. According to Fritzsche, many postwar parties opposed these; the Nazis were nothing new in this respect. If we want to understand the real role of WW1 in the rise of Nazism, we should start not in 1918 but in 1914, and look at the way it made the Germans feel one people, even though they had been that in theory for over 40 years. Facing attack from outside in 1914, Germans coalesced into what “the Kaiser called the Burgenfrieden, the “peace of the fortress”, [which] promised to resolve the divisions between workers and the middle classes, between socialists and conservatives, [and] between Protestants and Catholics.”This was important in a divided country. Fritzsche points out that (for example) Prussian voters were divided into property classes, the highest of which were allocated votes of greater value. The popular mobilization brought people together for the first time in a sense of common purpose and resulted in an unprecedented level of civic engagement – the Volksgemeinschaft, the community working as one. A side-effect was that it meant the stratified society of imperial Germany was no longer viable. But it was not satisfactorily replaced. The new civic engagement never went away. But in the 1920s it was expressed through a series of interest groups, and parties linked to different professional or trade bodies. It was not a substitute; but when the Nazis arrived, people did feel a sense of common purpose. The way the Nazis did this was, for Fritzsche, far more important than Versailles or reparations, which were already the subject of political discourse. As to anti-semitism, he does not deny its existence in pre-1933 Germany, but does not see the Nazis as having any ownership of it then – all parties were somewhat anti-semitic – or find any evidence that most Germans supported anything like a “final solution”. It is the Volksgemeinschaft that is important here.Is Fritzsche right? Perhaps only Germans can answer this, but I feel he is onto something, if only because he provides an explanation for Nazism that does not rely on Germans being a weird, separate species. After all, no human is. I know plenty of Germans. They do not have two heads. A reviewer of this book in the Jerusalem Post commented that “Historians examining nations over periods of time have somehow to find a balance between what is inherent in a people and what is not, in order to attempt explanations of national attitudes and conduct.” But can you, in fact, have such a balance – is there anything “inherent in a people”? It is an important point, as ascribing Nazism to the German character has induced a dangerous conviction in other countries that they would never behave as the Germans did. Could any historical phenomenon be repeated by any country, given the right circumstances?Fritzsche doesn’t answer that question, and he doesn’t speculate on the broader implications of his theory. He leaves that to the reader, which is perhaps what a good historian should do. But one notes that many people in Western countries seem to feel that their sense of identity is threatened, and do not feel that any entity represents them collectively. Neither, it seems, do many Americans. In fact they seem to feel that there is no single national life, no conversation, that includes them, and few fora for civic engagement. Neither left nor right answers these concerns. In this situation, many will turn to those who claim to speak for them and against “the establishment”, and who promise to return their sense of belonging. These trends at least partly underlie the Brexit vote in Britain, the meteoric rise of Trump in the US and the growth of populist right-wing movements in Europe. If Fritzsche’s thesis is correct, could the German pattern be replicated elsewhere?Fritzsche quotes Hitler’s dictum that the nationalists forgot the social and the socialists forgot the national. Hitler forgot neither. Given people’s feelings of powerlessness against business, globalization and a perceived loss of identity, this is an important point. In fact Fritzsche’s thesis invests the Nazi phenomenon with a universality that makes this book crucial in this new time of populism.

Excellent book.

Accurate description

There is so much more revealed of how Hitler was able to transform the Germans to do his will.

An interesting look into what made ordinary germans follow into the path of history that put them into the Holocaust

Interesting book on how a madman could transform the masses to his own ends.

It's Okay.

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!

Specialist, very good