The history of German National Socialism is one of the most popular topics in the historiography of both Western Europe and the USA, and Russia. Scientific schools and directions consider this phenomenon from completely different points of view. So, some interpretations of the very concept of National Socialism can be found at least a dozen. The more interesting are those scientific monographs that deviate from the numerous clichés of the perception of Nazism, consider new topics, and are based on little-known sources.
Fest J. Adolf Gitler. Perm, vol. 1–3, 1993
One of the best scientific biographies A. Hitler, written by the West German researcher J. Fest, raises the question not only of the formation of the Fuhrer's personality, but also in general about the era of the early twentieth century, the "great fear" of the little man and the origins of National Socialism. Paying special attention to the Vienna period in Hitler's life, Fest comes to the conclusion that the main features of his pathological worldview were formed precisely in his youth. The combination of the charismatic features of this man - a leader and a representative of the masses at the same time - and his inconspicuousness hid a huge political potential, which was in demand during the economic crisis of 1929-1933. The book is written in an unusually lively and vivid language, read in one breath. The author's insight into the psychological motivation of Hitler's actions, the reconstruction of his worldview is unique, while Fest was able to avoid both the search for the Fuhrer's charisma in the sphere of mysticism and the subconscious, and the excessive rationalization of his worldview. The final section of the book - "Incapacity to Survive" - sums up both Hitler's life and the path on which he was able to captivate the Germans. Nazism is a one-way road to destruction and the biggest national catastrophe in German history.
Fry N. Fuhrer State. National Socialists in Power: Germany, 1933–1945. M., 2009
The book by the West German historian Norbert Fry is a study of how Nazism "gained power over the hearts" of the Germans, how the formation of the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany took place. This is a concise but vivid history of Nazism in power, with special attention to ordinary people, their hopes, their feelings and illusions associated with Hitler. The result is not a dry narrative, but the history of the life of the nation, generations, whose life I let through myself and crippled Nazism. Particular attention is paid to the socio-psychological attractiveness of Nazism, the essence of the "people's community" - one of the myths about the unity of the Germans in the new regime. The monograph reflects the transformations in the sphere of governance of society and the state, presents the author's polemical point of view on the three points of no return in the history of Nazism, the last of which was a radical turning point in World War II in 1942. After that, a gradual denazification of society began in Germany, the “myth of the Fuhrer” began to crumble, and at the end of the war the Germans stopped believing in Hitler.
Brovko L.N. The Church and the Third Reich. SPb., 2009
LN Brovko has been dealing with problems of the history of the Catholic and Protestant Christian denominations in the era of Nazism for many years. As a result, a comprehensive study of both the position of the state in relation to Christianity and the church, and the attitude of the churches themselves and their individual representatives to National Socialism appeared. This problem is often understood as a confrontation between Nazi ideology and Christianity. Meanwhile, the ideological resistance of the church was very contradictory, with the rejection of the new government, the ideas of a sacred relationship to the state, patriotism, and a simple human desire to survive conflicted. The find of the work are emotional portraits of famous church leaders and theologians. The author explains the reasons for the statist orientation of the German Protestants and the origins of the emerging protest among them, analyzes in detail the essence and consequences of the concordat of the dictatorship with the Catholics, presents the multicolored palette of church life: from earnest prayers for the Fuhrer and support for any of his actions to underground resistance in the church.
Timofeeva T.Yu."Did we live a normal life?" Family in Berlin in the 1930s and 1940s 20th century M., 2011
In the book, for the first time in the Russian historiography of National Socialism, an attempt was made to show the life of ordinary, unremarkable people during the period of Nazism, to explain their attitude to the regime, which gave them a short-lived illusion of normalization, “ordinary life”. The author examines the carrot and stick of the Nazi regime: both the illusions of order and stability, national revival, which most Germans enthusiastically shared, and the pervasive sense of fear of denunciations and terror. The greatest attention is paid to the display family life in the capital of the Nazi regime - Berlin, which was the main stage in the tragedy of German national history. The author comes to the conclusion about the invasion of Nazism into the most intimate spheres of people's lives and about the family's attempts to preserve traditions, which forced it to adapt to the regime and thereby wittingly or unwittingly contribute to the policy of the Nazi dictatorship. One by one, family foundations collapsed in a desperate desire to live an “ordinary life”, and people preferred not to notice the total regulation and control until the war came and with it the time of reckoning.
Kunz K. Conscience of the Nazis. M., 2007
The very title of the book by the English professor Claudia Kunz sounds unusual and polemical: what conscience can the Nazis have? The monograph is devoted to the most difficult problem in the history of National Socialism - the introduction of its ideology into the everyday consciousness of the Germans, the rooting of Nazi ideas, primarily racial ones. The author attacks a calm attitude to the events of the "remote" past, to the sometimes comical image of the Fuhrer, placing at the center of his research the historical and psychological problems of the conscience of the nation in a crisis period and the horror of the philistine position - "if only we were happy in this world." The morality of the Nazis in its racial basis was a monstrous perversion, but propagated eternal human values: duty - only in relation to their nation, loyalty - only to "their own", honor - only to the "Aryans", happiness - only in German "purified" from subhumans the world. What was an ideology felt like absolute truth. Absolute evil took on the appearance of a racial good. The apogee of such a moral code was one of the most famous slogans of that era: "A human face is not yet a sign of a person." All this would have been unthinkable without the mass support of the regime, and it was its numerous adherents, and not some dark forces, who did evil with their own hands in the name of the triumph of lofty ideas.
The greatest luxury in authoritarian and totalitarian states is to act according to one's conscience. Many would like to, but they are held back by the fear of falling into disgrace (in a confidential conversation, one modern official said: "I realized that it is DANGEROUS to act according to one's conscience"). But for the mass of people knocked out of the traditional system of values and not taught to think independently, such a question is not at all worth it. They are easily zombified, and under the sauce of pseudo-patriotism they can be "fed" with any criminal doctrine: for example, that there are only enemies around, that therefore it is necessary to destroy representatives of some social or ethnic group, etc. Such people are willingly deceived if criminal decisions are made in the name of the "leader", in the name of the state. They are willingly deceived, if it is profitable to agree with everything coming "from above", but it is dangerous to doubt. This is how fascism is born.
A very relevant book was written by Claudia Kunz:
Conscience of the Nazis. - M.: Ladomir, 2007. - 400 p.
The author's main conclusions are set out in the review below.
We already know a lot about the Nazi regime. There are many studies that show in detail exactly how Hitler came to power. How the German Reichswehr and its generals pulled this figure of a petty informer out of oblivion; how the German monopolies fed his miserable party; how and why war veterans, lumpen, and finally the middle strata reached out to him; how he was helped by the nationalist and revanchist-minded bureaucracy; how the economic crisis of the late 1920s pushed the Nazis to power. Finally, in detail - day by day - that behind-the-scenes intrigue of several old politicians, generals and monopolists, as a result of which the Kaiser Field Marshal Hindenburg nevertheless appointed the "Bohemian corporal" as chancellor, was studied in detail. Alas, we now know very well how the short-sighted and suicidal policy of the leaders of the German workers' parties provided Hitler with the most favored nation treatment - and the general strike, which was so feared by both the Nazis and their sponsors: the Krupps, Thyssen and other Hjalmars of Shakhta - never happened . But there is one question that almost always makes one wonder: why is it that the vast majority of the population of an entire country has become involved in nightmarish crimes?
After the war during the Nuremberg trials and the ensuing denazification, which never achieved its goals, the masses of the townsfolk experienced relief:
“With each document of the prosecution, when the entire rank of Nazis from Goering to Keitel is getting blacker and blacker, the average German becomes like a clear romantic moon over Heidelberg Castle ... “That's what they turned us into! If only we knew!” - the chorus of the parteigenosse, who until recently looked with pleasure at how the peoples of the whole world are humiliated and destroyed, is poured.
The American historian Claudia Kunz begins his book with the phrase: “The phrase “the conscience of the Nazis” is not an oxymoron.” And already at the very beginning of the book, the author declares: “Not thoughtless obedience, but conscious acceptance - this is what characterized the German style of cooperation with evil” (p. 33).
Indeed, it has long been known that refusal to participate in punitive operations, pogroms, violations of anti-Jewish boycotts, etc. did not lead to disastrous consequences for the refuseniks in Nazi Germany. An example of an officer who refused to take the oath to Hitler and was simply dismissed from the army for this is given by the philosopher Karl Jaspers, Kunz herself refers to numerous other examples. The Gestapo did not persecute those who did not accept the general racist doctrine ( we are talking about the times before the declaration of "total war" - from the end of the summer of 1944, Nazi courts began to issue death sentences, not embarrassed by the Aryan origin of the defendants). Many Germans furtively sympathized with the Jews, even hiding them - but the Nazi state "considered agreement or disagreement as a private matter for everyone."
But if it was not just about disagreement, but about organized political opposition, then there could be no talk of any softness. The first thing the Nazis did after coming to power, as you know, was to destroy the communists and social democrats. And here the first “brick” of that unique Nazi “conscience” was laid, which would then easily justify the gas chambers. As you know, immediately after coming to power, the Nazis unleashed terror against the Communists, and after them - against the Social Democrats. And this terror "met with approval in Germany and abroad" - in contrast to the Jewish pogroms. Even "Goering apologized to the leading association of German Jews, assuring that the Communists suffered from Nazi persecution more than the Jews" (p. 60). Respectable German townsfolk reacted quite tolerantly to the massacre of some of their fellow citizens.
Why? The main answer, argued on the pages of the book, is simple - the reason is "ethnic fundamentalism", when the main measure of morality is allegedly the interests of the people, understood in the logic of "blood and soil", when "you are nothing, your people are everything." And the "golden rule" of morality should now apply only to "representatives of one's own race."
In several chapters, Kunz traces the role of intellectuals in securing a "racist consensus" in German society. A separate chapter talks about the support of the Nazis by famous philosophers Martin Heidegger, Karl Schmitt and theologian Gerhard Kittel. Interestingly, none of them in the 20s. could not be accused of anti-Semitism: Heidegger maintains a close relationship with the Jewish Hannah Arendt, Schmitt dedicates his book to a Jew who died in the war, and Kittel, trained in the rabbinates, emphasizes the importance of Jewish-Christian cooperation and also dedicates his work to the memory of a deceased Jewish colleague. But in the early 30s and immediately after Hitler came to power, they threw all their authority to support Nazism, which rendered him an invaluable service - the support of authorities who had not previously been associated with Nazism was expensive at that moment.
Nazi intellectuals held conferences, created special anti-Semitic institutions, jurists, biologists, physicians, philosophers argued about the definitions of "Jew". True, as soon as they tried to put anti-Semitism and racism on an organized “scientific” basis, it quickly became clear: even the concept of race could not be defined in Nazi terms, discord and disputes did not stop. It even got to the point that "specialists on racial issues" did not recommend Nazi leaders to use this concept at all - because of complete confusion. “Neither the blood, nor the size of the skull, nor the shape of the nose - no specific signs of Jewishness were ever revealed, which, of course, was not reported to the general public” (p. 216).
But the propaganda effect was achieved. Anti-Semitism was supported by the authority of academic science, moreover, the Nazis spread these ideas - in a respectable way, of course - and abroad. Publications issued by special institutions like the National Socialist Bureau of Education for Population Policy and Racial Welfare turned racism into a norm, sanctified by the authority of science. Allegedly "objective" studies taught the German at first to stop paying attention to the daily oppression of the Jews, and then to accept passive or Active participation in genocide. “How could one protest against the increasingly brutal persecution when the moral degradation of the Jews was “objectively proven”?” (p. 211).
At the same time, it is worth emphasizing that many scientists who refused to rely on racism were ousted from prestigious associations, lost their places on editorial boards, but retained their positions and titles (p. 214). Most cooperated with the Nazis quite consciously and proactively. It was this complicity and the enormous help of intellectuals in the implementation of the policy of racism that gave reason to Viktor Klemperer, a German philologist of Jewish origin, who miraculously survived, to write:
“If the fate of the vanquished were in my hands, I would let go in peace ordinary people and even some of the leaders ... but I would hang all the intellectuals, and I would hang the professors three feet higher than all the rest ”(p. 238).
But in post-war Germany, as you know, it was this category of Nazi criminals who got off the lightest.
Kunz, having drawn a convincing picture of the construction of the Nazi conscience, alas, completely bypasses the question of why this became possible in principle. Why Schmitt, Heidegger, Lorentz (p.151) and others outstanding minds not only easily succumbed to the Nazi infection, but also found themselves in the forefront of its distributors? But this is a separate and complex problem, which the American historian, apparently, deliberately refused to solve.
It may seem strange, but the majority of Germans did not approve of either gross racism or pogroms: Kunz shows that every time - both in 1933, and before the approval of the Nuremberg Racial Laws in 1935, and after Kristallnacht in 1938 - the Nazi regime after these bursts of violence faced massive disapproval, which was carefully studied - and worried about this. Moreover, aggressive propaganda simply did not bear fruit: even high-ranking Nazi officials used the services of Jews, not to mention ordinary citizens.
After each bout of violence, the Jews were limited in their rights, the pogroms stopped - and the "bureaucratic decision" seemed to restore order. “With the exception of ardent anti-Semites, who were a minority, the Germans reacted negatively to what they considered unauthorized violence, but were ready to approve any measures fanned by the authority of the law” (p. 198). And here the policy of "two sides of the coin" worked: aggressive Jewish pogroms - and "bureaucratic decisions" (deprivation civil rights, bans on the profession, legislative "Aryanization" of Jewish property). In fact, these two logics were a single whole:
“... A fatal scheme: first, Jews are subjected to unbridled physical violence, then the regime restricts unauthorized outrages and replaces them with anti-Semitic laws. Both the victims themselves and outsiders did not always correctly assess the threat of this bureaucratic strategy, which ultimately turned out to be much more terrible than sporadic violence” (p. 64-65).
Even after the war, the unfinished Nazi officials used the following argument: “The hellish persecution of the Jews ... became a terrible reality not thanks to, but rather contrary to the Nuremberg Laws [emphasis added by K. Kunz],” wrote Bernhard Lösener, a racial expert of the Nazi German Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 1950 (p. 209). And the worst thing is that even the Jews themselves believed in this for a long time.
At the same time, ideological indoctrination was carried out, with the help of which the Germans were convinced that the Jews actually posed a danger to the state and people, that violence against them was “self-defense” from the influence of the Jews (p. 262). As a result, the method of "cold pogrom", that is, legislative bureaucratic restrictions on Jews, turned out to be much worse than supposedly "spontaneous" outbursts of cruelty. The result of this bureaucratic logic was the “final decision”, which was perceived by the direct executors as the fulfillment of a heavy duty:
“Instead of saying: “What terrible things I do to people!” - the killer could exclaim: “What terrible things I have to watch, doing my duty, how difficult the task that fell on my shoulders!”
The vast majority of Germans knew perfectly well what was happening to the Jews in Germany. They heard the song of the Hitler Youth “How Jewish blood splatters from a knife”, they saw what was happening with their neighbors, they could observe trains with “deportees” to Auschwitz or Treblinka. And this is not to mention the fact that millions took a personal part in all this as soldiers on eastern front, railway workers, officials, policemen, etc. Millions “decided that they knew enough to know that it was better not to know about it” (p. 287).
In this way, even before the war, the Germans were prepared by the Nazis for their main task: the planned conquest and robbery of the "eastern territories", where not only Jews, but also Slavs were presented as subhumans.
Unfortunately, K. Kunz almost does not mention another important reason for the "Nazi consent" that reigned in the Third Reich. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of Germans really received material benefits from the robbery of the Jews, and most importantly, from the subsequent war of conquest.
Of course, as Mikhail Romm said in his famous film, "there was another Germany"... Those who actively resisted Nazism were few, but they were. But I want to draw the reader's attention to one extremely alarming fact - already from the present. In the popular online community ru_history, one of the users posted the story of the German soldier Josef Schulz. In July 1941, after the defeat of the Serbian village of Orahovac, his platoon was ordered to join the firing squad and execute a group of detained "partisans". Josef refused to carry out the criminal order: throwing his weapon, he stood on a par with the condemned and was immediately shot along with the partisans and hostages.
Without a doubt, a heroic deed and one that makes you remember this "other Germany" once again. But the comments were:
Baba act. The enemy can be respected, pitied, and even shed a tear for him. But! Become together with the enemy against YOUR OWN!
Stand next to you, recognize yourself as a sheep. Josef is not a hero, he is a sheep.
The traitor and traitor got what he deserved.
Since when have the traitors of their homeland, albeit a fascist one, become heroes!?
Yes, there were other reviews. But the percentage of fascists is amazing. Of course, such Internet communities are a well-known garbage dump, of course, fascists and nationalists are hyperactive on the Internet, and yet it is worth noting that the ethics described by Kunz in relation to the Third Reich have not gone into the past. This example shows once again that the question of the "conscience" of the Nazis is in fact not only a historical and philosophical problem and not only an ethical paradox-oxymoron - but above all a problem of current politics.
Sergei Solovyov. Ethics of killers // Left politics. 2008. No. 6.
Particularly relevant is the role of helpful intellectuals, isn't it?
Let's start with the fact that the publisher's annotation is not entirely accurate - the topic of planting Nazi ideology in the political and everyday consciousness of the Germans is studied in sufficient detail in Russian historiography. In 2008, the Eksmo Publishing House published three works by A. Vasilchenko, a well-known Russian specialist in the history of the Third Reich, dedicated to the racial, sexual and occult myths of Nazi Germany. The first of them - "The Aryan myth of the III Reich" (http://www.site/books/164965/) - analyzes in great detail the emergence, development and formation of racial thinking both in pre-Hitler Germany and after the latter came to power.
However, a feature of the work of K. Kunz is, firstly, an integrated approach to this problem (see table of contents); secondly, her work is a historical and psychological study, the focus of which is the ideology of Nazism, in particular its racist component. The author is trying to investigate a rather subtle matter - the area public relations where morality and conscience are formed. Such a historical and psychological analysis is indeed largely new to domestic science, although such works have long existed abroad and are popular.
This book reveals many unknown pages in the history of Nazism. Let's say we know quite well the views of Hitler and his supporters, but we do not always have a good idea of the evolution of these views, and they changed over time. We are also aware of how the Nazis persecuted the Jews, but we do not realize that such a policy was preceded by long discussions among the ideologists of Nazism themselves, who on a number of issues did not agree with each other. You can read about all this in this book. Let's say Hitler used the term Aryan "but did not say" Nordic "(in the racial literature of that era - these are different things), and Himmler, the head of the SS, only dreamed of Nordic, but was not interested in Aryan; the concept of" Jew "was not a legally verified definition was given, which caused a lot of headaches for officials of the III Reich; Nazi scientists were never able to prove how the Jews fundamentally differ from other nations, unconvincingly pressing on a certain “Jewish spirit” and their alleged “mimicry” that does not allow them to easily and easy to discover.
K. Kunz showed that Nazism filled the vacuum in the lives of many Germans by proposing a social doctrine understandable and pleasing to many, expressed in an emotional, semi-religious language and explaining the cause of German difficulties. She speaks in her book about the existence of two forms of anti-Semitism - emotional and rational. The first was characterized by boycotts and pogroms, the second is characterized by the adoption of various laws that set in motion the Nazi machine of persecution, deportations and murders. In the end, he turned out to be the most terrible, because he was given the appearance of legality. This, by the way, allowed many Germans to say later that they were only executors, or even just contemporaries of the policy of physical extermination of all opponents of the German people.
K. Kunz showed how racism developed among the Germans, who were far from all initially supporters of Hitler, including the so-called. "peaceful years" - 1933-39. It was a time when a generation was formed that absorbed one of the slogans of the III Reich - "The human face is not yet a sign of a person." - and in fact brought it to life almost throughout Europe, from France to the USSR.
A very good work based on a significant amount of interesting and little-known materials for us. This full-fledged scientific study, published in London in 2003, with a detailed reference apparatus, allows us to evaluate the modern Western view of the history of Nazism.
The book contains a huge number of rare illustrations of the time, some of which I have not seen before. True, even on offset paper they do not always look good ...
Table of contents: Ch.1. ethnic conscience; Chapter 2. Politics of virtue; Chapter 3. Allies in the academy; Chapter 4 Mastering the political culture; Chapter 5 Ethnic revival and racist prejudice; Chapter 6 The swastika in the hearts of youth; Chapter 7 Law and racial order; Chapter 8 In search of respectable racism; Chapter 9 Warriors of the race; Chapter 10. Race war in your country.
I recommend it to anyone who is interested in an objective look at the emergence of Nazi ideology in Germany in the 1930s.
