Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodge-podge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world. How did he discover that ideology? How was it that cohorts of leaders, followers, and ordinary citizens adopted aspects of National Socialism without experiencing the "leader" first-hand or reading his works? They shared a collective desire to create a harmonious, racially select, "community of the people" to build on Germany's socialist-oriented political culture and to seek national renewal. If we wish to understand the rise of the Nazi Party and the new dictatorship's remarkable staying power, we have to take the nationalist and socialist aspects of this ideology seriously. Hitler became a kind of representative figure for ideas, emotions, and aims that he shared with thousands, and eventually millions, of true believers who were of like mind . They projected onto him the properties of the "necessary leader," a commanding figure at the head of a uniformed corps that would rally the masses and storm the barricades. It remains remarkable that millions of people in a well-educated and cultured nation eventually came to accept or accommodate themselves to the tenants of an extremist ideology laced with hatred and laden with such obvious murderous implications.
When reason fails to guide us in our everyday lives, we turn to faith, to religion; we close our minds; we reject austere reasoning.
In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, acclaimed historian Robert Gellately focuses on the dominant powers of the time, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but also analyzes the catastrophe of those years in an effort to uncover its political and ...
Gripping and significant, Hitler's Beneficiaries makes a radically new contribution to our understanding of Nazi aggression, the Holocaust, and the complicity of a people.
“When this book was first published it received some attention from the critics but none at all from the public.
Schacht had always found and 1936. Rearmament expenditure autarky and the war economy alone in 1933 was 2772 million questionable , so switched to more Reichmarks or 6.3 percent of net conventional financial strategies .
Presents an analysis of the psychology of mass movements, whether religious, social, or nationalist, identifying the traits they have in common, and looking at the types of people who participate in such movements.
Born Stephanie Richter in Vienna, the princess acquired her title by marrying Prince Franz Friedrich Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a lesser member of one of Europe's most prominent aristocratic families.
... 44 , 57 , 174 , 186 , 107 , 213–215 ; and true - belief , 4 , 35–36 , 52 , 59 , 141 ; See also Charisma Lenz , Frederick , 84 Leviathan , 42 , 205 , 209 Lewis , C. S. , 3 Lewis , W. Arthur , 54 , 85 Liberation Theology , 74 , 144.
... of German physicists in the immediate post - war period . In Hoffmann & Walker ( 2012 ) . R. Hoffmann ( 2006 ) ... Physical Society during the Third Reich ' , Physics in Perspective 7 ( 3 ) , 293–329 . D. Hoffmann & M. Walker ( eds ) ( 2011 ) .
See Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Avon Books, 1965); and G. P. Gooch et al., The German Mind and Outlook (London: Chapman & Hall, 1945). 28. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian, 1971).