An account of the relationship between Austrian industrial workers and the Nazis regime.

Using evidence gathered in Europe and the United States, Evan Bukey crafts a nuanced portrait of popular opinion in Austria, Hitler's homeland, after the country was annexed by Germany in 1938. He demonstrates that despite widespread dissent, discontent,

Before seizing power the Nazi movement assembled an exceptionally broad social coalition of activists and supporters. Many were working class, but there remains considerable disagreement over the precise size and structure of this constituency and still more over its ideology and politics. An indispensable work for scholars of interwar Germany and Nazism in general.

The image of Hitler as a demagogic "pied piper" leading astray the "little people" of Austria is as misleading as it is powerful. Nazism and the Working Class in Austria is a case study of the ambiguous relationship between state and society under the Nazis. Workers did not seriously attempt or even expect to overthrow the Nazi regime in the face of unprecedented surveillance and terror; but neither were they converted, and their oppositional strategies and disgruntled political opinions reveal a truculent workforce, rather than one that was contented and converted.

This book argues that Germans and Austrians have dealt with the Nazi past very differently and these differences have had important consequences for political culture and partisan politics in the two countries. Drawing on different literatures in political science, Art builds a framework for understanding how public deliberation transforms the political environment in which it occurs. The book analyzes how public debates about the 'lessons of history' created a culture of contrition in Germany that prevented a resurgent far right from consolidating itself in German politics after unification. By contrast, public debates in Austria nourished a culture of victimization that provided a hospitable environment for the rise of right-wing populism. The argument is supported by evidence from nearly two hundred semi-structured interviews and an analysis of the German and Austrian print media over a twenty-year period.

Although Austrians comprised only 8 percent of the population of Hitler's Reich, they made up 14 percent of SS members and 40 percent of those involved in the Nazis' killing operations. This was no coincidence. Popular anti-Semitism was so powerful in Austria that once deportations of Jews began in 1941, the streets of Vienna were frequently lined with crowds of bystanders shouting their approval. Such scenes did not occur in Berlin. Exploring the convictions behind these phenomena, Evan Bukey offers a detailed examination of popular opinion in Hitler's native country after the Anschluss (annexation) of 1938. He uses evidence gathered in Europe and the United States--including highly confidential reports of the Nazi Security Service--to dissect the reactions, views, and conduct of disparate political and social groups, most notably the Austrian Nazi Party, the industrial working class, the Catholic Church, and the farming community. Sketching a nuanced and complex portrait of Austrian attitudes and behavior in the Nazi era, Bukey demonstrates that despite widespread dissent, discontent, and noncompliance, a majority of the Austrian populace supported the Anschluss regime until the bitter end, particularly in its economic and social policies and its actions against Jews.

Hitler's 'thousand-year Reich' lasted barely longer than twelve brief and inglorious years, and yet had an impact on millions of ordinary lives scarcely comparable with any other episode in modern European history. Nazi Germany examines the origins and development of Nazism, the establishment of the dictatorship and the impact on Germany's economy, society and culture of the regime's single-minded drive towards war and genocide. The view from above, reflected in the movement's ideology, policy and legislation is complemented by the many, often conflicting, views from below, as described in the reports smuggled out of Germany by Socialist dissidents or overheard by the regime's spies and policemen. Tim Kirk depicts a society divided, where most were initially wary of Hitler and sceptical about his party and its promises, and where even enthusiastic admirers quickly became disgruntled; but where the majority complied and few were inclined to oppose or resist the regime, or its brutalities, until disillusionment set in and the prospect of defeat was imminent. Approachable and authoritative, this is an essential introduction to one of the most significant periods in German, and modern European, history.