Abstract
1The leitmotif of Nazi Germany was the regime’s insistence on the construction of a Volksgemeinschaft; a harmonious society without political or social conflict, but based upon racial divides. With extensive examples from labour conflicts in Weimar Berlin, the article argues that the reconciliation of the workers with the racial ideas of the Volksgemeinschaft was not only a driving force within Nazi ideology in the Third Reich, but that it also shaped the policies of the Nazi movement in the Weimar era. Importantly, the roots of this commitment can be traced to the Nazi leadership’s interpretation of the German experience of the First World War and the political turmoil which followed in its wake. More than anything, the lost war and the upheavals following it shaped the social policies of Nazism1
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Kjøstvedt, A.G. (2017). In the Shadow of the Lost War: The Nazi Movement and Labour Conflicts in the Weimar Period. In: Salvador, A., Kjøstvedt, A. (eds) New Political Ideas in the Aftermath of the Great War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38915-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38915-8_7
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