INSIDE NAZI GERMANY: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life

by Detlev J.K. Peukert ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1987

First published (with great success) in Germany in 1982, this complex social history of the Third Reich investigates the response--support, tolerance, and opposition--of German citizens to Nazism. It is unclear whether Deveson's translation drags or whether Peukert is no stylist: what is certain is that the prose here lurches like a lame ox. A shame, because Pew kerfs thesis intrigues: that Nazism was less a new phenomenon than a twisted chapter in an ongoing crisis of modernism. He develops this thesis first by exploring the supportive bases of Nazism, concluding, as others have, that Nazism arose primarily within a middle class alienated by the economic and moral chaos that followed WW I. He does argue, however, that one base of Nazism--the cult of the Fuhrer--remained a touchstone of approval for most Germans for the duration of the Third Reich; no matter what they thought of Nazism or the War, most Germans worshiped Hitler. Turning next to opposition to Nazism, he finds that resistance was widespread among many Germans, primarily in the working class, but that it surfaced more in passivity or privatism than in active subversion--and that it confined itself to rebellion against economic and cultural strictures. Even hotbeds of revolt, like the juvenile gangs Peukert depicts roaming the land and beating up Hitler youth, were more interested in personal freedom than in protecting the oppressed. Almost universally and shockingly, Peukert concludes, Germans approved of Nazi terrorism and racism, seeing in them a means, albeit desperate, to deal forcefully with the displacement and Angst of modernity. Peukert's diligent research and liberal display of historic documents partly absolve his lumbering, pedantic presentation; still, his findings shed no brilliant new light on the success of Nazism, so this book will appeal most to historians and sociologists.

Pub Date: May 1, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Yale Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1987

Categories: NONFICTION