When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they promised to build a vibrant consumer society. But they faced a dilemma. They recognized that consolidating support for the regime required providing Germans with the products they desired. At the same time, the Nazis worried about the degrading cultural effects of mass consumption and its association with 'Jewish' interests. This book examines how both the state and private companies sought to overcome this predicament. Drawing on a wide range of sources - advertisements, exhibition programs, films, consumer research and marketing publications - the book traces the ways National Socialists attempted to create their own distinctive world of buying and selling. At the same time, it shows how corporate leaders and everyday Germans navigated what S. Jonathan Wiesen calls 'the Nazi marketplace'. A groundbreaking work that combines cultural, intellectual and business history, Creating the Nazi Marketplace offers an innovative interpretation of commerce and ideology in the Third Reich.

Highlights the surprising ways in which the Nazi regime permitted or even fostered aspirations of privacy.

In this fascinating volume, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy elucidates the phenomenon of the Nazi propaganda machine via the perspective of consumer marketing, conceptualising the Reich as a product campaign. Building on his acclaimed Selling Hitler (2016), he uses marketing scholarship to show how propaganda and political marketing existed not merely as an instrument of government in Nazi Germany, but as the very medium of government itself. Marketing the Third Reich explores the insidious connection between a mass culture and a political movement, and how the cultures of consumption and politics influence and infect each other – consumerised politics and politicised consumption. Ultimately its concern is with the ‘engineering of consent’ – the troubling matter of how public opinion can be manufactured, and governments elected, via sophisticated methodologies of persuasion developed in the consumer economy. Nazism functioned as a brand, packaging almost everything with persuasive purpose. Revealing obvious parallels between Adolf Hitler’s use of the living theatre of politics, and our present public–political dramaturgy, between Nazi lies and our post-truth, the book raises the chilling question: was Hitler ahead of his time? This radical, original, in-depth study will be an invaluable resource for all scholars of marketing history, political marketing, propaganda and history.

Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History is a brief but comprehensive survey of the Third Reich based on current research findings that provides a balanced approach to the study of Hitler’s role in the history of the Third Reich. The book considers the economic, social, and political forces that made possible the rise and development of Nazism; the institutional, cultural, and social life of the Third Reich; World War II; and the Holocaust. World War II and the Holocaust are presented as logical outcomes of the ideology of Hitler and the Nazi movement. This new edition contains more information on the Kaiserreich (Imperial Germany), as well as Nazi complicity in the Reichstag Fire and increased discussion of consent and dissent during the Nazi attempt to create the ideal Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community). It takes a greater focus on the experiences of ordinary bystanders, perpetrators, and victims throughout the text, includes more discussion of race and space, and the final chapter has been completely revised. Fully updated, the book ensures that students gain a complete and thorough picture of the period and issues. Supported by maps, images, and thoroughly updated bibliographies that offer further reading suggestions for students to take their study further, the book offers the perfect overview of Hitler and the Third Reich.

In Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, a character articulates the fascination goods, technology, and modernity held for many Latin Americans in the early twentieth century when he declares that “incredible things are happening in this world.” The modernity he marvels over is the new availability of cheap and useful goods. Steven Bunker’s study shows how goods and consumption embodied modernity in the time of Porfirio Díaz, how they provided proof to Mexicans that “incredible things are happening in this world.” In urban areas, and especially Mexico City, being a consumer increasingly defined what it meant to be Mexican. In an effort to reconstruct everyday life in Porfirian Mexico, Bunker surveys the institutions and discourses of consumption and explores how individuals and groups used the goods, practices, and spaces of urban consumer culture to construct meaning and identities in the rapidly evolving social and physical landscape of the capital city and beyond. Through case studies of tobacco marketing, department stores, advertising, shoplifting, and a famous jewelry robbery and homicide, he provides a colorful walking tour of daily life in Porfirian Mexico City. Emphasizing the widespread participation in this consumer culture, Bunker’s work overturns conventional wisdom that only the middle and upper classes participated in this culture.

Nazi Germany provides a comprehensive survey of the National Socialist dictatorship, artfully balancing social and cultural history with a political and military history of the regime. The book unravels the complexities of the daily lives of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders in the 'Third Reich', and it also places events in Germany from 1933 to 1945 in a transnational context. Nazi Germany prompts readers to think about not only the historical debates but also the ethical questions that attend the study of this period. Pamela E. Swett and S. Jonathan Wiesen address: *The movement's ideological origins and the party's rise to power *The creation of a police state, the use of propaganda, and public support for Nazi ideas and programs *The Nazis' persecution of religious, racial, and sexual minorities *The place of youth, family, gender, and cultural expression in Nazi society *The transnational influence of Nazism and preparations for war in Germany *The Holocaust, resistance to Nazism, and the Second World War Swett and Wiesen explore how the violence and racism of the Nazis coexisted alongside Germany's self-presentation as a 'normal' state with happy, productive citizens.Through exposure to the voices of contemporaries, readers will be prompted to consider key questions: How did German democracy give way to a brutal dictatorship so quickly? What was daily life like for 'average' Germans and those labeled as biological and political outsiders? Why did the Nazi dictatorship embark on a destructive war that led to the death of tens of millions of Europeans and to the demise of a political order that had become exceedingly popular by 1939?

This book traces how Gottfried Feder and Fritz Todt made technology essential to the Nazi ‘world view’. They groomed engineers with a racist technical ideology that prepared them to later supervise slave labor and the Holocaust. Their concepts evolved from völkisch technocracy to an idealized harmony of man, machine and nature, and were eclipsed by Albert Speer’s total war. Partially due to willing ‘self-coordination’ from engineers, they gained political control over the engineering profession. Destined to be pillars of the Volksgemeinschaft, engineers were indoctrinated with Nazi principles of Aryan superiority at the Reich School of Technology, the Plassenburg. Nazi propaganda announced a bright future through technology, furthering a sense of normalcy in Germany, despite the ruthless exclusion of those unwanted.