The Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism

‘It couldn’t happen here’, goes the complacent assurance that the horror of the Nazi state will not recur elsewhere, because surely it arose from unique circumstances. Within a long-standing debate over the real origins of Nazi Germany, this book offers a special contribution which integrates marxist theory with first-hand experience.

In the early 1930s Alfred Sohn-Rethel worked as editorial assistant at the Fuhrerbriefe, a current affairs newsletter circulated exclusively among the upper echelons of German big business; meanwhile he passed on information to the anti-Nazi underground, until fleeing to England in 1936. Sohn-Rethel’s book documents that inside information, as well as anecdotes about the lurid personalities of early 1930s Germany. He uses the material to characterize the Nazi state as a capitalist solution to economic crisis. Thus his argument provides a
timely intervention in to current debates among historians.

In her Afterword , Jane Caplan draws out the book’s relevance to controversies about the origins of fascism, both then and now. She emphasizes Sohn-Rethels account of Nazi rule as a means of disciplining labour, and discusses the implications for today’s economic crisis.

Alfred Sohn-Rethel has taught at Bremen University.

Jane Caplan teaches European history at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania.