Couverture / Jaquette

In the spring of 1933, German society was deeply divided - in the Reichstag elections on 5 March, only a small percentage voted for Hitler. Yet, once he seized power, his creation of a socially inclusive Volksgemeinschaft, promising equality, economic prosperity and the restoration of honor and pride after the humiliating ending of World War I persuaded many Germans to support him and to shut their eyes to dictatorial coercion, concentration camps, secret state police, and the exclusion of large sections of the population. The author argues however, that the everyday practice of exclusion changed German society itself: bureaucratic discrimination and violent anti-Jewish actions destroyed the civil and constitutional order and transformed the German nation into an aggressive and racist society. Based on rich source material, this book offers one of the most comprehensive accounts of this transformation as it traces continuities and discontinuities and the replacement of a legal order with a violent one, the extent of which may not have been intended by those involved.

Note biographique

Michael Wildt studied history, cultural studies, and theology at the University of Hamburg. From 1993 to 2009, he was a Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Contemporary History in Hamburg, the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, and The International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. He is Professor of Modern German History at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Table des matières

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Volksgemeinschaftas a Political Concept

• The origins of the Volksgemeinschaft during the First World War
• "All Authority emanates from the Volk"
• Weimar Parties and the Volksgemeinschaft
• Volksgemeinschaftas Exclusion

Chapter 2. Anti-Semitic Violence in the Weimar Republic

• Fall 1923
• Violence in the Provinces
• Caesura 1930
• Assault on the Constitutional State

Chapter 3. 1933 - "They won't do anything to us, after all we're Germans"

• April Boycott
• Emden
• Dual State

Chapter 4. The Boycott as a Political Arena

• Tradition of Boycotts
• Resentment
• Boycott Actions in Hesse
• Schlüchtern
• Gelnhausen
• Political Arena

Chapter 5. The Crowd as an Actor

• Gelnhausen
• Intensification of Violence
• East Prussia
• Collective Violence

Chapter 6."Racial Defilement" - Honor, Gender, and Volk's Justice

• Persecution of "Racial Defilement" after the Seizure of Power
• Pillory Processions 1935
• Norden
• Media
• Honor and Shame
• The Nuremburg Laws

Chapter 7. The Dilemma of the Politics of Violence

• The "Individual Actions" continue
• Jemgum
• Gladenbach
• Wolfhagen
• "Illusion of the Grace Period"

Chapter 8. Pogrom

• The Pogramatic Mood in the early Fall of 1938
• November Pogrom
• Wolfhagen
• Emden
• Norden
• Treuchtlingen
• Pogroms in Europe
• Effects

Conclusion: The Production of the Volksgemeinschaft

• Inclusion and Exclusion
• Division
• Honor and Shame
• Popular Justice (Volksrecht)
• Self-Empowerment

Bibliography
Index of Places

Détails