In the spring of 1933, German society was deeply divided – in the Reichstag elections on 5 March, only a small percentage voted for Hitler. Yet, once he seized power, his creation of a socially inclusive Volksgemeinschaft, promising equality, economic prosperity and the restoration of honor and pride after the humiliating ending of World War I persuaded many Germans to support him and to shut their eyes to dictatorial coercion, concentration camps, secret state police, and the exclusion of large sections of the population. The author argues however, that the everyday practice of exclusion changed German society itself: bureaucratic discrimination and violent anti-Jewish actions destroyed the civil and constitutional order and transformed the German nation into an aggressive and racist society. Based on rich source material, this book offers one of the most comprehensive accounts of this transformation as it traces continuities and discontinuities and the replacement of a legal order with a violent one, the extent of which may not have been intended by those involved.

The first English-language study of German-Japanese interwar relations to employ sources in both languages.

A book examining the strange terrain of Nazi sympathizers, nonintervention campaigners and other voices in America who advocated on behalf of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of these friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy. Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. They were even members of Congress who used their franking privilege—sending mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda. And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee. We try to tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism. Hitler's American Friends is a powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we could return to it.

The Dynamics of Nazism: Leadership, Ideology, and the Holocaust focuses on the problems of theory and history, in which the basic concern of psychoanalysis, the subjective strivings and perceptions, might be integrated with the basic concern of sociology, the organized collective behavior. This book contains four chapters and begins with a description of the principles and ideology of Nazism and the conservative intelligentsia. The second chapter discusses the psychosocial bases of Hitler's appeal and the heterogeneity of his movement. This chapter particularly emphasizes the emotional effect of Nazism events. The third chapter looks into the traditional psychoanalytic orientations to social action during Hitler's leadership. The fourth chapter treats the rationalizations of a shocking and bizarre racism, social struggles, and violence. Psychoanalysts, psychohistorians, sociologists, and psychologists will find this book a great value.

The book deals with the historical roots of Nazi ideology, its basic features, and its political and military impact in the Third Reich.

A ground-breaking study that gets us closer to solving the mystery of why so many Germans embraced the Nazi regime so enthusiastically and identified so closely with it.

Nazi Germany may have only lasted for 12 years, but it has left a legacy that still echoes with us today. This work discusses the emergence and appeal of the Nazi party, the relationship between consent and terror in securing the regime, the role played by Hitler himself, and the dark stains of war, persecution, and genocide left by Nazi Germany.