Download or read book The Stab in the Back Myth and the Fall of the Weimar Republic written by George S. Vascik and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-11 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique sourcebook explores the Stab-in-the-Back myth that developed in Germany in the wake of World War One, analyzing its role in the end of the Weimar Republic and its impact on the Nazi regime that followed. A critical development in modern German and even European history that has received relatively little coverage until now, the Stab-in-the-Back Myth was an attempt by the German military, nationalists and anti-Semites to explain how the German war effort collapsed in November 1918 along with the German Empire. It purported that the German army did not lose the First World War but were betrayed by the civilians on the home front and the democratic politicians who had surrendered. The myth was one of the foundation myths of National Socialism, at times influencing Nazi behaviour in the 1930s and later their conduct in the Second World War. The Stab-in-the-Back Myth and the Fall of the Weimar Republic draws on German government records, foreign and domestic newspaper accounts, diplomatic reports, diary entries and letters to provide different national and political perspectives on the issue. The sourcebook also includes chapter summaries, study questions, and further reading lists, in addition to numerous visual sources and a range of maps, charts, tables and graphs. This is a vital text for all students looking at the history of the Weimar Republic, the legacy of the First World War and Germany in the 20th century.
Download or read book The Death of Democracy written by Benjamin Carter Hett and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen. Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship. Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.
Download or read book A Deadly Legacy written by Tim Grady and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2018 This book is the first to offer a full account of the varied contributions of German Jews to Imperial Germany’s endeavors during the Great War. Historian Tim Grady examines the efforts of the 100,000 Jewish soldiers who served in the German military (12,000 of whom died), as well as the various activities Jewish communities supported at home, such as raising funds for the war effort and securing vital food supplies. However, Grady’s research goes much deeper: he shows that German Jews were never at the periphery of Germany’s warfare, but were in fact heavily involved. The author finds that many German Jews were committed to the same brutal and destructive war that other Germans endorsed, and he discusses how the conflict was in many ways lived by both groups alike. What none could have foreseen was the dangerous legacy they created together, a legacy that enabled Hitler’s rise to power and planted the seeds of the Holocaust to come.
Download or read book From Empire to Republic written by Collectif and published by innsbruck University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-29 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Austria transformed itself from an empire to a small Central European country. Formerly an important player in international affairs, the new republic was quickly sidelined by the European concert of powers. The enormous losses of territory and population in Austria's post-Habsburg state of existence, however, did not result in a political, economic, cultural, and intellectual black hole. The essays in the twentieth anniversary volume of Contemporary Austrian Studies argue that the small Austrian nation found its place in the global arena of the twentieth century and made a mark both on Europe and the world. Be it Freudian psychoanalysis, the “fin-de-siècle” Vienna culture of modernism, Austro-Marxist thought, or the Austrian School of Economics, Austrian hinkers and ideas were still wielding a notable impact on the world. Alongside these cultural and intellectual dimensions, Vienna remained the Austrian capital and reasserted its strong position in Central European and international business and finance. Innovative Austrian companies are operating all over the globe. This volume also examines how the globalizing world of the twentieth century has impacted Austrian demography, society, and political life. Austria's place in the contemporary world is increasingly determined by the forces of the European integration process. European Union membership brings about convergence and a regional orientation with ramifications for Austria's global role. Austria emerges in the essays of this volume as a highly globalized country with an economy, society, and political culture deeply grounded in Europe. The globalization of Austria, it appears, turns out to be in many instances an “Europeanization”.
Download or read book Dragonslayer written by Jay Lockenour and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating biography of the infamous ideologue Erich Ludendorff, Jay Lockenour complicates the classic depiction of this German World War I hero. Erich Ludendorff created for himself a persona that secured his place as one of the most prominent (and despicable) Germans of the twentieth century. With boundless energy and an obsession with detail, Ludendorff ascended to power and solidified a stable, public position among Germany's most influential. Between 1914 and his death in 1937, he was a war hero, a dictator, a right-wing activist, a failed putschist, a presidential candidate, a publisher, and a would-be prophet. He guided Germany's effort in the Great War between 1916 and 1918 and, importantly, set the tone for a politics of victimhood and revenge in the postwar era. Dragonslayer explores Ludendorff's life after 1918, arguing that the strange or unhinged personal traits most historians attribute to mental collapse were, in fact, integral to Ludendorff's political strategy. Lockenour asserts that Ludendorff patterned himself, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, on the dragonslayer of Germanic mythology, Siegfried—hero of the epic poem The Niebelungenlied and much admired by German nationalists. The symbolic power of this myth allowed Ludendorff to embody many Germans' fantasies of revenge after their defeat in 1918, keeping him relevant to political discourse despite his failure to hold high office or cultivate a mass following after World War I. Lockenour reveals the influence that Ludendorff's postwar career had on Germany's political culture and radical right during this tumultuous era. Dragonslayer is a tale as fabulist as fiction.
Download or read book The Stab in the Back Myth and the Fall of the Weimar Republic written by George S. Vascik and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-11 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique sourcebook explores the Stab-in-the-Back myth that developed in Germany in the wake of World War One, analyzing its role in the end of the Weimar Republic and its impact on the Nazi regime that followed. A critical development in modern German and even European history that has received relatively little coverage until now, the Stab-in-the-Back Myth was an attempt by the German military, nationalists and anti-Semites to explain how the German war effort collapsed in November 1918 along with the German Empire. It purported that the German army did not lose the First World War but were betrayed by the civilians on the home front and the democratic politicians who had surrendered. The myth was one of the foundation myths of National Socialism, at times influencing Nazi behaviour in the 1930s and later their conduct in the Second World War. The Stab-in-the-Back Myth and the Fall of the Weimar Republic draws on German government records, foreign and domestic newspaper accounts, diplomatic reports, diary entries and letters to provide different national and political perspectives on the issue. The sourcebook also includes chapter summaries, study questions, and further reading lists, in addition to numerous visual sources and a range of maps, charts, tables and graphs. This is a vital text for all students looking at the history of the Weimar Republic, the legacy of the First World War and Germany in the 20th century.
Download or read book Who Voted for Hitler written by Richard F. Hamilton and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the traditional belief that Hitler's supporters were largely from the lower middle class, Richard F. Hamilton analyzes Nazi electoral successes by turning to previously untapped sources--urban voting records. This examination of data from a series of elections in fourteen of the largest German cities shows that in most of them the vote for the Nazis varied directly with the class level of the district, with the wealthiest districts giving it the strongest support. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book Nazism and War written by Richard Bessel and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2009-03-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incendiary work of scholarship arguing that racism was the driving force behind Nazism, rather than a by-product of it—essential reading in an age of renewed fears of bigotry, tyranny, and fascism. World War II was the defining event of the twentieth century, redrawing the political map in ways that continue to affect nearly the entire human race. What was unprecedented, however, was not simply the war’s scale, but its causes. Unlike previous territorial or political clashes, the war launched by Nazi Germany was an ideological one, waged to wipe entire peoples and cultures from the face of the earth. In Nazism and War, Richard Bessel, one of the preeminent authorities on the social and political history of modern Germany, demonstrates that “Nazi war was racial struggle; Nazi racial struggle was war.” War was the anvil on which Hitler’s worldview was forged: German National Socialism emerged triumphant over a country deeply scarred by defeat and eager to reclaim its greatness. As a political philosophy, Nazism glorified struggle and conflict, viewing them as the purpose of a nation and a measure of its overall condition. As a political movement and state system, Nazism made its ideology real, plunging the European continent into a war of annihilation and a sea of blood. Nazism destroyed the old Europe, and thus helped to create the world in which we live. Praise for Nazism and War “[A] stimulating and thoughtful volume.”—Richard Overy, Literary Review “[A] rich, well-rounded portrait . . . offers both the serious scholar and the lay reader a concise yet comprehensive perspective on the events and horrors of that period.”—Publishers Weekly “[An] impressive study . . . highly recommended.”—Library Journal “Clear, engaging, and quietly profound.”—Booklist
Download or read book The Hitler Conspiracies written by Richard J. Evans and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Brilliant, a 5 out of 5 masterpiece' Evening Standard The renowned historian of the Third Reich takes on the conspiracy theories surrounding Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, in a vital history book for the 'post-truth' age The idea that nothing happens by chance in history, that nothing is quite what it seems to be at first sight, that everything that occurs is the result of the secret machinations of malign groups of people manipulating everything from behind the scenes is as old as history itself. But conspiracy theories are becoming more popular and more widespread in the twenty-first century. Nowhere have they become more obvious than in revisionist accounts of the history of the Third Reich. Long-discredited conspiracy theories have taken on a new lease of life, given credence by claims of freshly discovered evidence and novel angles of investigation. This book takes five widely discussed claims involving Hitler and the Nazis and subjects them to forensic scrutiny: that the Jews were conspiring to undermine civilization, as outlined in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'; that the German army was 'stabbed in the back' by socialists and Jews in 1918; that the Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to seize power; that Rudolf Hess' flight to the UK in 1941 was sanctioned by Hitler and conveyed peace terms suppressed by Churchill; and that Hitler escaped the bunker in 1945 and fled to South America. In doing so, it teases out some surprising features these, and other conspiracy theories, have in common. This is a history book, but it is a history book for the age of 'post-truth' and 'alternative facts': a book for our own troubled times.
Download or read book Hindenburg written by Anna von der Goltz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis investigates the various political and cultural manifestations of the myth surrounding German Chief of Staff and Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, from the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914 to his death in the 'Third Reich' and beyond. How this little-known General, whose career to normal retirement age had provided no real foretaste of his heroic status, became a national icon and living myth, and what this phenomenon tells us about one of the most crucial periods in German history, is the subject of this book. The book charts the origins of the Hindenburg myth during the First World War, looks at how it survived the revolution, and explains why Hindenburg's name on the ballot mesmerized voters in the presidential elections of 1925 and 1932. The only two times in German history that the people could elect their head of state directly and secretly, they chose this national icon; Hindenburg even managed to defeat Hitler in 1932, making him the Nazi leader's ultimate arbiter. The book examines the complex role of the Hindenburg myth in fashioning the Führer cult, while also emphasizing its more wide-ranging appeal prior to 1933. The Hindenburg myth, in fact, caught the imagination of an exceptionally broad social and political coalition of Germans, turning it into one of the most potent forces in German politics in a period otherwise characterised by rupture and fragmentation. Crucially, it managed to survive military failures and political disappointments. As the author shows, the mythical narrative was constantly evolving, but the belief in Hindenburg's mythical qualities was more enduring than a narrow application of Weber's model of 'charismatic authority' -- which defines projection as key -- would suggest.
Download or read book The Murder of Professor Schlick written by David Edmonds and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Wittgenstein's Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe's history On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle—an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick—and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason. The Vienna Circle's members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt Gödel. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The Circle championed the philosophy of logical empiricism, which held that only two types of propositions have cognitive meaning, those that can be verified through experience and those that are analytically true. For a time, it was the most fashionable movement in philosophy. Yet by the outbreak of World War II, Schlick's group had disbanded and almost all its members had fled. Edmonds reveals why the Austro-fascists and the Nazis saw their philosophy as such a threat. The Murder of Professor Schlick paints an unforgettable portrait of the Vienna Circle and its members while weaving an enthralling narrative set against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and rising extremism in Hitler's Europe.
Download or read book Hindenburg Ludendorff and Hitler written by Clifford Alexander and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They are two of twentieth-century history's most significant figures, yet today they are largely forgotten - Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, Germany's First World War leaders. Although defeat in 1918 brought an end to their 'silent dictatorship', both generals played a key role in the turbulent politics of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis.Alexander Clifford, in this perceptive reassessment of their political careers, questions the popular image of these generals in the English-speaking world as honorable 'Good Germans'. For they were intensely political men, whose ideas and actions shaped the new Germany and ultimately led to Hitler's dictatorship.Their poisonous wartime legacy was the infamous stab-in-the-back myth. According to the generals, the true cause of the disastrous defeat in the First World War was the betrayal of the army by politicians, leftists and Jews on the home front. This toxic conspiracy theory polluted Weimar politics and has been labeled the beginning of 'the twisted road to Auschwitz'.Hindenburg and Ludendorff's political fortunes after the war were markedly different. Ludendorff inhabited the far-right fringes and engaged in plots, assassinations and conspiracies, playing a leading role in failed uprisings such as Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Meanwhile Hindenburg was a vastly more successful politician, winning two presidential elections and serving as head of state for nine years. Arguably he bore even more responsibility for the destruction of democracy, for he and the nationalist right he led sought, through Hitler, to remold the Weimar system towards authoritarianism.
Download or read book Hitler s First War written by Thomas Weber and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Hitler's formative experiences as a soldier on the Western Front - now told in full for the first time, presenting a radical revision of Hitler's own account of this time in Mein Kampf.
Download or read book In Hitler s Munich written by Michael Brenner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1935, Adolf Hitler declared Munich the "Capital of the Movement." It was here that he developed his anti-Semitic beliefs and founded the Nazi party. Though Hitler's immediate milieu during the 1910s and 1920s has received ample attention, this book argues that the Munich of this period is worthy of study in its own right and that the changes the city underwent between 1918 and 1923 are absolutely crucial for understanding the rise of antisemitism and eventually Nazism in Germany. Before 1918, Munich had a decidedly cosmopolitan flavor, but its open atmosphere was shattered by the November Revolution of 1918-19. Jews were prominently represented among many of the European revolutions of the late 1910s and early 1920s, but nowhere did Jewish revolutionaries and government representatives appear in such high numbers as in Munich. The link between Jews and communist revolutionaries was especially strong in the minds of the city's residents. In the aftermath of the revolution and the short-lived Socialist regime that followed, the Jews of Munich experienced a massive backlash. The book unearths the story of Munich as ground zero for the racist and reactionary German Right, revealing how this came about and what it meant for those who lived through it"--
Download or read book Hitler s Prisons Legal Terror in Nazi Germany written by Nikolaus Wachsmann and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State prisons played an indispensable part in the terror of the Third Reich, incarcerating many hundreds of thousands of men and women during the Nazi era. This important book illuminates the previously unknown world of Nazi prisons, their victims, and the judicial and penal officials who built and operated this system of brutal legal terror. Nikolaus Wachsmann describes the operation and function of legal terror in the Third Reich and brings Nazi prisons to life through the harrowing stories of individual inmates. Drawing on a vast array of archival materials, he traces the series of changes in prison policies and practice that led eventually to racial terror, brutal violence, slave labor, starvation, and mass killings. Wachsmann demonstrates that "ordinary" legal officials were ready collaborators who helped to turn courts and prisons into key components in the Nazi web of terror. And he concludes with a discussion of the whitewash of the Nazi legal system in postwar West Germany.
Download or read book Hitlerland written by Andrew Nagorski and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, Nagorski chronicles Hitler's rise to power and Germany's march to the abyss, as seen by Americans--diplomats, military, expats, visiting authors, Olympic athletes--who watched horrified and up close.
Download or read book The Hitler Myth written by Ian Kershaw and published by Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1987-06-04 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The personality of Hitler himself can hardly explain his immense hold over the German people. This study, a revised version of a book previously published in Germany under the title Der Hitler-Mythos: Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich, examines how the Nazis, experts in propaganda, accomplished the virtual deification of the Führer. Based largely on the reports of government officials, party agencies, and political opponents, Dr Kershaw charts the creation,growth, and decline of the 'Hitler Myth'.
