In a succinct and highly readable text, Alan E. Steinweis presents a synthesis of classic and recent research on the origins, development, and downfall of Nazi Germany. Rooted in nationalism and racism, and commanded by a charismatic leader, the Nazi movement created a populist and authoritarian alternative to a democratic republic plagued by unemployment and political fragmentation. A one-party dictatorship was achieved quickly after Hitler became chancellor in January 1933. In the years before World War II, the Nazi regime achieved popularity by restoring Germany to great-power status and by presiding over an economic recovery fueled by rearmament. Simultaneously the regime set in place an apparatus of coercion to marginalize Jews and other groups deemed objectionable by Nazi ideology, as well as to quell domestic opposition to the declared goals of the German “People’s Community.” Nazi ideology formed the basis for Germany’s goals and actions in World War II, which aimed at German hegemony and a racial transformation of Europe. Despite considerable internal dissent and some active resistance, the Nazi regime mobilized German society behind the war effort. In the end, Nazism was defeated from the outside by a superior military alliance.

Chapter 8 surveys German-dominated Europe between September 1939 and June 1941. A Nazi empire was the source of millions of foreign laborers for the German economy. Germany’s occupation of Poland was especially severe, involving the annexation of territory, forced ethnic resettlement, and the systematic liquidation of much of that country’s leadership class. Occupation policy in Poland also included the ghettoization of the country’s Jewish population, which was also subjected to forced labor. These actions mirrored measures taken against German Jews, many of whom were made to live in “Jew Houses,” and perform labor for German municipalities and business enterprises. During this same period, the German government organized the mass murder of Germans institutionalized for mental disabilities. The program, known as T4, was staffed by medical personnel who arranged for the transfer of patients from clinics and hospitals to killing centers, which employed poison gas. About 70,000 patients were murdered under the auspices of T4, which ceased operation in the face of mounting protest in German society. The killing of disabled patients continued in other forms through the end of the war, while many of the T4 personnel were transferred to Poland to organize the mass murder of Jews through poison gas.

Chapter 6 examines a spectrum of policies and practices employed by the Nazi regime to impose ideological conformity on Germans and to marginalize those regarded as racially alien, hereditarily damaged, or hostile to the People’s Community. At the core of the apparatus of coercion was the Secret State Police (Gestapo) and a network of concentration camps, both of which operated to a significant extent outside the traditional system of justice. While only a minority of Germans spent time in concentration camps, the mainstream of society was subjected to daily rituals of conformity, such as contributing to the Winter Relief campaigns, decorating one’s home with Nazi flags, and performing the Hitler salute. Organized resistance to the regime remained diffuse and ineffective in peacetime. Based on ideas from the international eugenics movement and on practices developed in the United States, the regime implemented a systematic program of eugenic sterilization. The regime translated its antisemitic ideology into action by legally defining the Jews as a race separate from the Germans, banning Jews from a variety of professions, and pursuing a process of “Aryanization” in which Jews were pressured to sell their property. Roma and Sinti (“Gypsies”) also became subject to racialization and persecution.

Chapter 2 analyzes the origins and growth of the Nazi movement against the general background of the history of the Weimar Republic, 1918–33. Weimar had to overcome numerous challenges: a lack of German experience with parliamentary democracy; an association with the hated Treaty of Versailles; the fragmentation of the German polity; the monetary inflation of the early 1920s; and the massive levels of unemployment during the Great Depression. The last of these factors fueled the popularity of the forces at the ideological extremes – the Nazi Party and the Communist Party – which rejected the Republic altogether, making the formation of parliamentary majorities more difficult, in turn resulting in the use of presidential emergency powers to govern the country. The Nazi Party (NSDAP) began as a revolutionary organization but turned to an electoral strategy after its failed coup (putsch) of 1923. Although its electoral support remained low before 1930, it developed under Hitler into a movement of highly motivated members and activists. After an electoral breakthrough in 1930, the NSDAP became Germany’s largest party in the July 1932 election. It did not enjoy a parliamentary majority, however, and Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship was ultimately made possible by support from German conservatives who saw the NSDAP as an anti-Communist bulwark.

Chapter 5 examines the pre-war experiences of ordinary Germans, focusing on the demographic categories of women, men, children, and university students. Nazi ideology subscribed to traditional notions of masculinity and femininity, and to traditional gender roles in the realms of work, domesticity, sex, and family. The Nazi regime saw homosexuality as a threat to the traditional gender order, and expanded arrests and prosecutions for male homosexuality. Although Nazism preferred women to remain at home, labor shortages caused by military conscription of men led the regime to encourage women to seek employment. In pursuit of prenatal policies, the regime toughened the legal prohibition on abortion and placed restrictions on birth control. German children aged 10–18 were subjected to cultural and ideological indoctrination in the Hitler Youth. Boys learned military-style drill, preparing them for eventual induction into the armed forces. Girls learned crafts, sewing, and other presumably feminine skills. Sporting and outdoor activities were emphasized for both boys and girls. Many young Germans enjoyed their time in the Hitler Youth, but there were also nonconformist youth, some of whom enjoyed disrupting Hitler Youth programs. The regime shrank the university system and subjected its students to political indoctrination, which many resented as heavy-handed and as a distraction from their studies.

Chapter 7 examines the foreign policy of Nazi Germany during the 1930s, as well as the events of World War II from September 1939 through early 1941. Hitler did not see revision of the Treaty of Versailles as an end goal of policy, but rather as a pretext for pursuing a far more ambitious program geared toward the waging of war and the conquest of “living space” (Lebensraum). He issued reasonable-sounding demands for ethnic self-determination of German minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and claimed to want peace even after telling his own military leaders that war would be necessary to achieve his aims. After annexing Austria in March 1938 with little pushback from other countries, Germany isolated Czechoslovakia, first annexing the Sudetenland in September 1938 and then destroying Czechoslovak statehood a few months later. The non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union opened the way for an attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, bringing Britain and France into the war. Germany defeated and partially occupied France in 1940 while British forces fled the continent. The German people supported the restoration of their country’s military power and the dismantling of the Treaty of Versailles but had mixed feelings about going to war.

Chapter 1 describes the main ideological tenets of National Socialism, usually called Nazism, and explains their deep roots in European thought, culture, and religious tradition. The chapter identifies the core elements of Nazi ideology as biological racism, Social Darwinism, eugenics, romantic nationalism, antisemitism, anti-Marxism, and anti-liberalism. While some of these elements were of recent vintage, antisemitism was a centuries-old phenomenon in Europe. The racial antisemitism propagated by Nazism modernized a sentiment that had historically been based in religious and economic animosities. Hitler and other leading Nazis were not original thinkers, but rather they channeled these disparate ideological strands into a loose synthesis. The diffuse and disparate nature of Nazi ideology proved to be a practical political advantage inasmuch as it offered a menu of ideas and grievances from which potential followers could choose. The “Socialism” contained in the phrase National Socialism had nothing to do with the Marxist tradition, but rather hearkened back to the antisemitic Christian Socialism of the nineteenth century and was intended to signal solidarity with Germans who were resentful of the exploitative aspects of capitalism, which were often associated with Jews.

Chapter 10 offers a wide-ranging examination of developments inside Germany from early 1943 to the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. After the major German defeat at Stalingrad, the Nazi regime announced a transition to a “Total War” footing, which involved a more thorough mobilization of women, university students, and youth for the war effort. The Allied air war against Germany intensified, inflicting widescale damage on German cities, and forcing German authorities to scramble to clear rubble and keep society functioning. Domestic resistance efforts intensified along a broad ideological spectrum but had little effect. The most notable instance of resistance was the failed attempt on July 20, 1944 to assassinate Hitler and have the army seize power. The end phase of the Nazi regime was characterized by the intensification of internally directed violence, the victims of which included foreign workers, Germans who wished to cooperate with the invading Allied armies in the West, and Jews who had managed to survive the Final Solution. The Volkssturm, a national militia created to help repel the invading forces, proved ineffectual. As Berlin was falling to the Red Army, Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. The German surrender followed in early May.

In a succinct and highly readable text, Alan E. Steinweis presents a synthesis of classic and recent research on the origins, development, and downfall of Nazi Germany. Rooted in nationalism and racism, and commanded by a charismatic leader, the Nazi movement created a populist and authoritarian alternative to a democratic republic plagued by unemployment and political fragmentation. A one-party dictatorship was achieved quickly after Hitler became chancellor in January 1933. In the years before World War II, the Nazi regime achieved popularity by restoring Germany to great-power status and by presiding over an economic recovery fueled by rearmament. Simultaneously the regime set in place an apparatus of coercion to marginalize Jews and other groups deemed objectionable by Nazi ideology, as well as to quell domestic opposition to the declared goals of the German “People’s Community.” Nazi ideology formed the basis for Germany’s goals and actions in World War II, which aimed at German hegemony and a racial transformation of Europe. Despite considerable internal dissent and some active resistance, the Nazi regime mobilized German society behind the war effort. In the end, Nazism was defeated from the outside by a superior military alliance.

Chapter 4 describes and analyzes the German economy during the peacetime period of Nazi rule, 1933–39, focusing on industry and the industrial working class, agriculture and the peasantry, the middle classes, and the professions. The chapter describes Nazi economic thinking as a form of managed capitalism, intending to preserve the basic features of the capitalist economy while using the authority of the state to impose peace between management and labor. Two entities of central importance to this arrangement were the German Labor Front, which replaced the independent labor unions, and the Trustees of Labor, who were government officials who determined wages and working conditions. German workers were granted access to vacations and cultural programs by the “Strength through Joy” organization. Managed capitalism also functioned in the agricultural economy, where the Reich Agricultural Estate exerted significant power over the activities of farmers in a so-called Ordered Market. Among the middle classes and professionals, economic opportunities were improved by the elimination of Jews from German commerce and from professions such as law and medicine. Economic policies thus helped win widespread acceptance for measures motivated by Nazi antisemitism.

Chapter 9 surveys World War II from the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 through late 1944, focusing on the intensifying violence inflicted by Germany on the inhabitants of the regions under its control. Hitler and other members of the Nazi leadership regarded the war in the East as an historic struggle against so-called Judeo-Bolshevism. Both the German army and German police carried out the systematic murder of real and suspected political officers in the Red Army. German occupation authorities pursued a policy of starvation targeted at Soviet civilians, especially in Ukraine, with a view to allocating the local food supply to German troops. At the same time, the Germans applied increasingly severe methods of anti-partisan warfare in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Europe. Starting in the summer of 1941, the so-called Final Solution to the Jewish question took the form of mass shootings of Jews in the Soviet Union by German special task forces. After Hitler decided in late 1941 to expand the genocide to the entire Jewish population of Europe, the Germans organized the deportation of European Jews to Poland, where they would be murdered in specially constructed extermination camps.

Chapter 3 focuses on the transformation of Germany into a one-party dictatorship. It focuses on the period from Hitler’s appointment to the German chancellorship on January 30, 1933 to his accession to the presidency and position of “Leader” (Führer) in August 1934. Two key steps toward dictatorship were the Reichstag Fire Decree of February 28, 1933, which suspended individual rights, and the Enabling Act, which transferred lawmaking authority from the parliament to the cabinet. The chapter also examines the prohibition of political parties other than the NSDAP. On the level of German society, the chapter analyzes the process known as “coordination” (Gleichschaltung), by which organizations were taken over by Nazis. An important feature of this development was “self-coordination,” in which organizations placed themselves under Nazi leadership voluntarily. Terror and intimidation formed the background for much of this process. The chapter examines the causes and consequences of the “Night of the Long Knives” of June 30, 1934, when the leadership of the Nazi SA, as well as many others, were killed on Hitler’s order. That violent event served to stabilize the Nazi regime by eliminating challenges to Hitler’s authority from both the SA and conservative circles.