The Social History of the Third Reich, 1933-1945 - Hardcover

Pierre Aycoberry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565845498 ISBN 13: 9781565845497

Publisher: New Press, 1999

Synopsis

A balanced, thorough study of Germany during the Nazi years, by the celebrated author of The Nazi Question. Questions posed by Nazi Germany continue to haunt us today. Attempts to explain the behavior of ordinary Germans during those fateful years have failed to rise above the level of polemic, Daniel Goldhagen's controversial Hitler's Willing Executioners being a prime example. Now, Pierre Ayoberry, author of the highly praised The Nazi Question, combines an extraordinary mastery of German history with original research to give us a uniquely balanced account of all aspects of German life under Hitler. Ayoberry uncovers the struggles of individuals and social and professional groups who stood up to the pressure of the Nazi Party, often paying a high price, and the attempts of others--mainly upper and middle class professionals--to salvage or improve their positions by casting their lot with the Fhrer. He also shows the devastation wrought on the once-vibrant German labor movement, leaving workers to choose between hopeless defiance or complicity and nationalism. In this complex answer to the easy judgments passed by many, Pierre Ayoberry paints a rich portrait of a society at once victim and accomplice to one of the greatest crimes of all time.

About this title

Review:

Germany's legacy of belligerence, through the First and especially the Second World War, forced ordinary German people into a great deal of collective hand wringing and self-examination in the wake of their final defeat in 1945. The ensuing years saw Germans "keen to close this parenthesis and begin rebuilding society," as contemporary-history scholar Pierre Ayçoberry puts it, but they had to reconcile their role in a regime responsible for unprecedented atrocities, in near-full collusion with both industry and the church. Ayçoberry cites a broad range of postwar intellectual and political positions, "denunciations and apologias relating to the Prussian tradition ... alternated with diagnoses of the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic, suggestions for the rejuvenation of conservatism and liberalism, and attempts to answer the piercing question, 'Are we Germans different from other peoples?'"

Ayçoberry, the respected author of The Nazi Question, revisits this self-examination with an objective outsider's eye and an exceptional facility with German history. Systematically cataloguing the significant events, individuals, and organizations in Germany from 1933 to 1945, Ayçoberry sorts out the period's difficult questions, shining light on and giving explanation for the many who threw in with the Führer and recounting the penalties paid by those who didn't. Chronologically arranged sections deal with the violence and terror of the SA and SS (including the brutal Death's Heads), examine how the Nazi myth was packaged and sold to the German public, and describe day-to-day reality in fractured wartime Germany. A weighty, academic study by an authority in the field (translated from the original French), Ayçoberry's Social History of the Third Reich is a rigorous, evenhanded chronicle of a complex and chaotic time. --Paul Hughes

About the Author:

Pierre Ayoberry is the author of The Nazi Question and an emeritus professor of contemporary history at the University of Human Sciences in Strasbourg, France. Janet Lloyd's many translations include Philippe Burrin's France Under the Germans (The New Press). She lives in England.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1565845498
• ISBN 13: 9781565845497
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 380