Political Violence Under The Swastika

Going to the active core of the Nazi revolt, this exciting psychological, sociological, and behavioral study is based on unique autobiographical stones supplied by over 500 pre-1933 rank-and-file Nazis. Peter Merkl's findings form the basis for a richer understanding of the political motivation of all extremist movements. Originally published in 1975. 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.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

On 30 January 1933, Alfred Hugenberg's conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) formed a coalition government with the Nazi Party, thus enabling Hitler to accede to the chancellorship. This book analyzes in detail the complicated relationship between Conservatives and Nazis and offers a re-interpretation of the Nazi seizure of power - the decisive months between 30 January and 14 July 1933. The Machtergreifung is characterized here as a period of all-pervasive violence and lawlessness with incessant conflicts between Nazis and German Nationals and Nazi attacks on the conservative Bürgertum, a far cry from the traditional depiction of the takeover as a relatively bloodless, virtually sterile assumption of power by one vast impersonal apparatus wresting control from another. The author scrutinizes the revolutionary character of the Nazi seizure of power, the Nazis' attacks on the conservative Bürgertum and its values, and National Socialism's co-optation of conservative symbols of state power to serve radically new goals, while addressing the issue of why the DNVP was complicit in this and paradoxically participated in eroding the foundations of its very own principles and bases of support.

The first theoretically informed study of the relationship between an academic discipline and what the Nazis termed their Weltanschauung. The first study of Sinnbildforschung, German ideograph or swastika studies, though more broadly it tells the tale of the development of German antiquarian studies (ancient Germanic history, archaeology, anthropology, folklore, historical linguistics and philology) under the influence of radical right wing politics, and the contemporary construction of 'Germanicness' and its role in Nazi thought. The swastika and similar symbols were employed by the ancestors of the modern day Germans. As these had also become emblematic symbols of the forces of German reaction, Sinnbildforschung became intrinsically connected with the National Socialist regime after 1933 and disappeared along with the Third Reich in 1945.

In noting that political violence was the product of choices made by political actors rather than the result of irresistible forces ...Schumann issues a pertinent warning while making a first-rate contribution to the scholarly literature on the Weimar Republic. Central European History A well-documented and skillfully argued book. German Studies Review In his exceptional regional study of the Prussian province of Saxony, Schumann offers a richly detailed analysis of political violence in the Weimar Republic...This is a wordy but methodical and ultimately convincing work of scholarship. Choice Schumann ... calls into question some assumptions, provides interesting nuances, and helps to refine our understanding of the nature of political violence in Weimar Germany. Journal of Modern History ... provides a well-documented, solid narrative and challenging analysis of Weimar's political violence... American Historical Review This] definitive work, rich in source material and analysis, dispels stereotypes of political violence in the Weimar Republic. Historische Zeitschrift The Prussian province of Saxony-where the Communist uprising of March 1921 took place and two Combat Leagues (Wehrverb nde) were founded (the right-wing Stahlhelm and the Social Democratic Reichsbanner) - is widely recognized as a politically important region in this period of German history. Using a case study of this socially diverse province, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of political violence in Weimar Germany with particular emphasis on the political culture from which it emerged. It refutes both the claim that the Bolshevik revolution was the prime cause of violence, and the argument that the First World War's all-encompassing "brutalization" doomed post-1918 German political life from the very beginning. The study thus contributes to a view of the Weimar Republic as a state in severe crisis but with alternatives to the Nazi takeover. Dirk Schumann is Professor of History at Georg-August University, G ttingen. He is the co-editor of Life After Death (2003), Violence and Society after the First World War (first issue of Journal of Modern European History 2003]), Between Mass Death and Individual Loss (2007). Most recently, he has edited Raising Citizens in the "Century of the Child" The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective (2010).

Focusing on Marburg, a contentious university town where voters demonstrated strong electoral support for Adolf Hitler's National Socialist party, this imaginative study discusses the political role of small-town organizational life and painstakingly reconstructs the full range of Nazi sympathizers' cross-affiliations with local voluntary groups.

Most studies of the radical right concentrate on movements in a single country, neglecting to some extent the international dimensions of right-wing extremism. Here, Merkl and Weinberg adopt a comparative perspective, concentrating on the revival of the right across a variety of countries.