Communists And National Socialists

A study of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the coming to power of the Nazis in Germany in 1933 in light of the marxist proposition that revolution would come in advanced capitalist societies. The implications of the actual cases for the theory are drawn out, and an original theorization of capitalist crisis combining economic and political factors is put forward.

Exploring the gray zone of infiltration and subversion in which the Nazi and Communist parties sought to influence and undermine each other, this book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between two defining ideologies of the twentieth century. The struggle between Fascism and Communism is situated within a broader conversation among right- and left-wing publicists, across the Youth Movement and in the "National Bolshevik" scene, thus revealing the existence of a discourse on revolutionary legitimacy fought according to a set of common assumptions about the qualities of the ideal revolutionary. Highlighting the importance of a masculine-militarist politics of youth revolt operative in both Marxist and anti-Marxist guises, Weimar Radicals forces us to re-think the fateful relationship between the two great ideological competitors of the Weimar Republic, while offering a challenging new interpretation of the distinctive radicalism of the interwar era.

An investigation into how the public brawling between communists and Nazis during the Weimar era masked a more subtle and complex relationship. This work suggests that the communists were forced into compromising strategies to counter the popularity of the Nazis at every level of society.

In May of 1945, there were more than eight million “displaced persons” (or DPs) in Germany—recently liberated foreign workers, concentration camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from all of Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as eastern Europeans who had fled west before the advancing Red Army. Although most of them quickly returned home, it soon became clear that large numbers of eastern European DPs could or would not do so. Focusing on Bavaria, in the heart of the American occupation zone, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism examines the cultural and political worlds that four groups of displaced persons—Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish—created in Germany during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The volume investigates the development of refugee communities and how divergent interpretations of National Socialism and Soviet Communism defined these displaced groups. Combining German and eastern European history, Anna Holian draws on a rich array of sources in cultural and political history and engages the broader literature on displacement in the fields of anthropology, sociology, political theory, and cultural studies. Her book will interest students and scholars of German, eastern European, and Jewish history; migration and refugees; and human rights.

Two dramatic speeches, made by the German Minister of Propaganda, at the famous Nuremberg rallies of 1935 and 1936, which sum up the National Socialist interpretation of Communism and its threat to the world. In Communism with the Mask Off (1935), Goebbels describes in detail the Jewish origins of Marxism and Communism, and lists the Jewish leaders and instigators of that ideology in Russia, Germany, many European nations and even China. "As far as we ourselves are concerned, we have completely overcome this menace. Indeed perhaps, outside of his work in Germany, the greatest service which our Fuhrer has rendered the world is that here in Germany he has set up a barrier against world Bolshevism against which the waves of this vile Asiatic-Jewish flood break in vain." In Bolshevism in Theory and Practice (1936), he discussed the practical social, political and economic consequences of Marxism-and how Germany had broken that menace. "We have proved under the most unfavourable circumstances that Bolshevism can be overcome if one wishes to do so, if one uses the proper means and if one is determined to oppose the powers of destruction with all one's strength and all one's manly courage. May the world follow Germany's example. Of course National Socialism is not suitable for export, and other nations shall not be persuaded or even forced to adopt its methods. Yet it may prove instructive, and its methods of procedure may stimulate other nations to adopt the same course and thus evade a terrible crisis." About the author: Paul Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945) was an early member of the Nazi Party and reputedly had the highest IQ in the party. He obtained a PhD from Heidelberg University in 1921 with a thesis in nineteenth century Romantic School Literature; he then went on to work as a journalist. By 1924, he had joined the NSDAP and two years later was appointed leader of the party in Berlin to wrest political control of that city from the Communist Party.

Exploring the gray zone of infiltration and subversion in which the Nazi and Communist parties sought to influence and undermine each other, this book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between two defining ideologies of the twentieth century. The struggle between Fascism and Communism is situated within a broader conversation among right- and left-wing publicists, across the Youth Movement and in the "National Bolshevik" scene, thus revealing the existence of a discourse on revolutionary legitimacy fought according to a set of common assumptions about the qualities of the ideal revolutionary. Highlighting the importance of a masculine-militarist politics of youth revolt operative in both Marxist and anti-Marxist guises, Weimar Radicals forces us to re-think the fateful relationship between the two great ideological competitors of the Weimar Republic, while offering a challenging new interpretation of the distinctive radicalism of the interwar era.