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Hitler and the Third Reich

  • Chapter
The Historiography of the Holocaust

Abstract

Adolf Hitler had a greater impact on the history of the world in the twentieth century than any other political figure.1 Yet his background was unimpressive. The son of a minor Austrian customs official, with a limited education, no qualifications or experience of government, and a foreigner, he nevertheless achieved the position of Führer, or leader, of Germany, one of the most economically developed and culturally sophisticated nations in the world. So how did he manage it? Was his success primarily the product of personal qualities? Was it the message he was preaching? Were the Germans peculiarly predisposed towards him or his message, and if so why? Was his success dependent more on the historical context in which he was operating? Or was it rather precisely due to a favourable conjuncture of the man, the message and the moment? These are the questions that have preoccupied historians since the 1930s.

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Notes

  1. The most reliable and balanced, indeed outstanding, biography is now I. Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936. Hubris (London: Allen Lane, 1998) and Hitler 1936–1945. Nemesis (London: Allen Lane, 2000). Three other biographies worth reading in English are K. Heiden, Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s rise to power, 2nd edition (London: Gollancz, 1967); A. Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, revised edition (London: Penguin Books, 1962); J. Fest, Hitler (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974). Other particularly useful studies are W. Carr, Hitler: A Study in Personality and Politics (London: Arnold, 1978); S. Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979); R. Zitelmann, Hitler: Selbstverstkndnis eines Revolutiondrs, 2nd edition (Stuttgart: Klett Kotta Verlag, 1989); J. Lukacs, The Hitler of History: Hitler’s Biographers on Trial (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998); R. Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his Evil (London: Macmillan, 1998). The best survey of interpretations of Hitler is G. Schreiber, Hitler: Interpretationen 1923–1983. Ergebnisse, Methoden und Probleme der Forschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche BuchQesellschaft, 1984).

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  2. See, for example, B.F. Smith, Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. 1967).

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  4. Ibid.. pp. 178ff.

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  12. On the origins of Hitler’s ideology, see the judicious assessment in Kershaw, Hitler, pp. 60ff. For the period in Vienna, see also Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna.

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  16. A good example of Hitler’s message is his speech of 19 November 1920 in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich entitled ‘The Worker in the Germany of the Future’; see E. Jackel and A. Kuhn, eds., Hitler: Samtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlaesanstalt. 1980). Do. 259–64.

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  22. W.L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (London: Secker and Warburg, 1960), pp. 90ff.

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  23. See F. Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967); idem, War of Illusions 1911–1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975); idem, ‘Zum Problem der Kontinuität in der deutschen Geschichte von Bismarck zu Hitler’, in idem, Der erste Weltkrieg und das deutsche Geschichtsbild: Beitrage zur Bewaltigung eines historischen Tabus (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1977). See also A. Hillgruber, Deutschlands Rolle in der Vorgeschichte der beiden Weltkriege, 2nd edition (GOttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979). For a discussion of the ‘Fischer controversy’, see J.A. Moses, The Politics of Illusion: The Fischer Controversy in German Historiography (London: George Prior, 1975). See more recently W.D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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  27. The most powerful critique was mounted by Blackbourn and Eley in The Peculiarities of German History. See also Thomas Nipperdey, ‘1933 und die Kontinuitat der deutschen Geschichte’, Historische Zeitschrift, 227 (1978), 86–111, translated in Aspects of the Third Reich, ed. H.W. Koch (London: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 489–508.

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  29. According to the historian Friedrich Meinecke, ‘Specifically German … was the frankness and nakedness of the German power state and Machiavellism, its hard and deliberate formation as a principle of conduct and the pleasure taken in its reckless consequences’; F. Meinecke, The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections (CambridQe. MA: Harvard University Press. 1950). Dn. 14–15.

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  30. See P. Fritzsche. Germans into Nazis (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press. 1998).

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  31. See R. Griffin. The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge. 1993).

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  32. See E. Voegelin, Die politischen Religionen (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1938), new edition edited by P.J. Opitz (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996); R. Aron, ‘Les religions seculaires’, in Une histoire du XXe siecle: Anthologie (Paris: Plon, 1996), pp. 139–222. For recent research on political religions, see H. Maier, ed., Totalitarismus und politische Religionen, Vol. 1 (Paderborn: Schoningh, 1996); H. Maier and M. Schafer, eds., Politische Religionen, Vol. 2(Paderbom: Schoningh, 1997); H. Maier, ed., Wege in die Gewalt: Die modernen politischen Religionen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000); H. Maier, “Totalitarismus” and “politische Religionen”’, Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, 43 (1995), 387–405. There is an extensive literature examining pseudo-religious aspects of Nazi practice and ritual. M. Burleigh’s recent major study of Nazism, The Third Reich: A New History (London: Macmillan, 2000) employs the concept. For a brief discussion of it, see pp. 3ff.

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  33. For Nazism in Munich and Bavaria, see H.J. Gordon Jr, Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); H. Wilhelm, Dichter, Denker, Fremder: Rechtsradikalismus in München von der Jahrhundertwende bis 1921 (Berlin: Transit, 1989); D.C. Large, Where Ghosts Walked: Munich’s Road to the Third Reich (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997).

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  34. A. Tyrell, Fuhrer befiehl … Selbstzeugnisse aus der ‘Kampfzeit’ der NSDAP (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1969) and W. Horn, Fuhrerideologie und Parteiorganisation in der NSDAP (1919–1933) (Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1972). See also J. Nyomarkay, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967) and D. Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party Vol. 1: 1919–1933 (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1969).

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  35. The classic work remains K.D. Bracher, Die Aufliisung der Weimarer Republik: Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie (Stuttgart: Ring Verlag, 1955). The most outstanding recent studies are G. Schulz, Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur: Verfassungspolitik und Reichsreform in der Weimarer Republik. Vol. 3: Von Bruning zu Hitler. Der Wandel des politischen Systems in Deutschland (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992); H.A. Winkler, Weimar 1918–1933: Die Geschichte der ersten deutschen Dernokratie (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1993); H. Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

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  36. J. Falter, Hitlers Wcihler (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1991).

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  37. On this period see, in addition to those works mentioned in note 40 above, H.A. Winkler, ed., Die deutsche Staatskrise 1930–1933: Handlungsspielraurne und Alternativen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1992).

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  38. H.A. Turner, Hitler’s Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 (London: Bloomsbury, 1996).

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  39. Among the most useful general works on the Third Reich are K.D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship (London: Penguin Books, 1973); M. Broszat, The Hitler State: the Foundation and Development of the Internal Structure (London: Longman, 1981); K. Hildebrand, The Third Reich (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984); H.-U. Thamer, Verfiihrung und Gewalt: Deutschland 1933–1945 (Berlin: Siedler, 1986); N. Frei, National Socialist Rule in Germany: The Fuhrer State 1933–1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); L. Herbst, Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996); Burleigh, The Third Reich; I. Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives oflnterbretation, 4th edition (London: Edward Arnold, 2001).

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  40. See D. Eichholtz and K. Gossweiler, eds., Faschisrnusforschung: Positionen, Probleme, Polemik (Cologne: Pahl-RuQenstein. 1980). no. 144. 141.

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  41. On Thalheimer, Bauer and’Bonapartism’, see G. Botz, ‘Austro-Marxist interpretations of Fascism’, Journal of Contemporary History, 11, 4(1976), 131–47.

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  42. E. Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941) and F. Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice ofNational Socialism (London: Victor Gollancz, 1942).

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  43. K.D. Bracher, W. Sauer and G. Schulz, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung. Studien zur Errichtung des totalitaren Herrschaftssystems in Deutschland 1933/34 (Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1960).

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  44. H. Buchheim, ‘Die SS — Das Herrschaftsinstrument’, in Anatomie des SS-Staates, vol.1, eds. H. Buchheim, M. Broszat and H.-A. Jacobsen (Munich: Deutsche Taschenbuchverlag, 19 79).

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  45. K.D. Bracher, Die Deutsche Diktatur: Enstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1969), translated as The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure and Consequences of National Socialism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971).

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  46. See above all C.J. Friedrich and Z. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956).

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  47. E. Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche (Munich: Piper, 1963), translated as Three Faces of Fascism (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965).

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  52. Ibid., P. 3.

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  53. See Binion, Hitler; W.C. Langer, The Mind of Adolf Hitler (London: Secker and Warburg, 1973); R.G.L. Waite, The Psychopathic God Adolf Hitler (New York: Basic Books. 199 7).

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  54. The first example was H. Mommsen, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich: Mit ausgewahlten Quellen zur nationalsozialistischen Beamtenpolitik (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1966). Others are P. Diehl-Thiele, Partei und Staat im Dritten Reich: Untersuchungen zum Verhaltnis von NSDAP und allgemeiner innerer Staatsverwaltung (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1969); P. Hiittenberger, Die Gauleiter: Studie zum Wandel des Machtgefuges in der NSDAP (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1969); R. Bollmus, Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner: Zum Machtkampf im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1970). See also E.N. Peterson, The Limits of Hitler’s Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1969).

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  55. The terms ‘intentionalist’ and ‘structuralist/functionalist’ were defined by Tim Mason in his essay ‘Intention and Explanation: A Current Controversy about the Interpretation of National Socialism’, in Der’Fiihrerstaat’: Mythos und Realitat. Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches, ed. G. Hirschfeld and L. Kettenacker (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), pp. 23–42. This volume contains the proceedings of a symposium held in May 1979 and attended by major protagonists in the debate. It includes key texts from each side of the argument: H. Mommsen, ‘Hitlers Stellung im nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem’, pp. 43–72, translated as ‘Hitler’s Position in the Nazi System’, in H. Mommsen, From Weimar to Auschwitz (London: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 163–88; and K. Hildebrand, ‘Monokratie oder Polykratie? Hitlers Herrschaft und das Dritte Reich’, pp. 73–97. Other important texts include: Broszat, The Hitler State, idem, ‘Soziale Motivation und Fuhrerbindung des Nationalsozialismus’, Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, 18 (1970), 407ff; K. Hildebrand, The Third Reich (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984). For two good discussions of the debate, see Schreiber, Interpretationen, pp. 284ff, and Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, pp. 59–79.

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  56. For the ‘polycratic’ thesis, see P. Hiittenberger, ‘Nationalsozialistische Polykratie’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 2 (1976), 417–42.

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  62. Ibid., p. 19.

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  63. Ibid., D. 15.

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  68. H. Mommsen, ‘Kumulative Radikalisierung und Selbstzersetzung des Regimes’, in Meyers Enzyklopedisches Lexikon, vol. 16 (Mannheim, 1976) and idem, ‘Cumulative Radicalisation and Progressive Self-Destruction as Structural Determinants of the Nazi Dictatorship’, in Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, ed. I. Kershaw and M. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 75–87.

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  69. H. Trevor-Roper, ‘The Mind of Adolf Hitler’, in Hitler’s Table Talk: Hitler’s Conversations Recorded by Martin Bormann (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953), pp. viiiff. However, it was not until 1959, when Trevor-Roper expressed these views in a lecture to an international conference that they received scholarly attention through the published version entitled ‘Hitler’s War Aims’. Significantly, once more the focus was on Hitler’s imperialism; indeed, this time there was no mention of the Jews. See H.R. Trevor-Roper, ‘Hitlers Kriegsziele’, Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, 8 (1960), 121–33, translated in Aspects, ed. Koch, pp. 235–50.

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  72. See the discussion in G. Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion: Nazi Ideology and Foreign Policy in the 1920s (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1985), pp. 234–6; M. Hauner, ‘Did Hitler want a World Dominion?’, Journal of Contemporary History, 13 (1978), 15–32; J. Aigner, ‘Hitler’s Ultimate Aims — a Programme of World Dominion?’, in Aspects, ed. Koch, pp. 285ff.

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  74. The only significant attempts to put forward a structuralist/functionalist analysis of Nazi foreign policy were: a) Tim Mason’s explanation of the outbreak of war partly in terms of domestic pressures created by contradictions within the regime. See Mason, Sozialpolitik, pp. 208ff., and b) Wolfgang Schieder’s analysis of Germany’s intervention in the Spanish Civil War, in ‘Spanischer Biirgerkrieg und Vierjahresplan. Zur Struktur nationalsozialistischer Aussenpolitik’, in Nationalsozialistische Aussenpolitik, ed. W. Michalka (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978), pp. 325–59. However, Mason’s thesis has been substantially refuted, notably by Richard Overy in ‘Germany, “Domestic Crisis” and War in 1939’, Past and Present, 116 (1987). 138–68.

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  75. R. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961).

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  77. Ibid., on. 18ff.

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  81. D. Irving, Hitler’s War (London: Viking Press, 1977). Irving has since — following his failed libel case against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books — been shown to be a Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer. See The Hon. Mr Justice Gray, The Irving Judgment: Mr. David Irving v. Penguin Books and Professor Deborah Lipstadt (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000); D.D. Guttenplan, The Holocaust on Trial: History, Justke and the David Irving Case (London: Granta, 2001); R.J. Evans, Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust and the David Irving Trial (London: Verso, 2002).

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  82. See M. Broszat, ‘Hitler and the Genesis of the Final Solution: An Assessment of David Irving’s Theses’, in Aspects, ed. Koch, pp. 390–429.

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  83. See H. Mommsen, ‘The Realization of the Unthinkable: The “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” in the Third Reich’, in Mommsen, From Weimar to Auschwitz, pp. 224–53.

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  84. G. Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1985).

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  85. Ibid., p. 2.

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  86. Among the most important works to focus on the question of a Hitler decision are D. Bankier, ‘Hitler and the Policy-making Process on the Jewish Question’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 3 (1988), 1–20; R. Breitling, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991); C.R. Browning, ‘From “Ethnic Cleansing” to Genocide to the “Final Solution”: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, 1939–1941’, and ‘Nazi Policy: Decisions for the Final Solution’, in Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 1–57; P. Burrin, Hitler and the Jews. The Genesis of the Holocaust (London: Edward Arnold, 1989); C. Gerlach, ‘The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler’s Decision in Principle to Exterminate All German Jews’, Journal of Modern History, 70 (1998), 758–812.

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  87. Among the most important works are G. Aly, ‘Final Solution’: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (London: Arnold, 1999); C. Gerlach, Krieg, Emahmng, Volkermord: Forschungen zur deutschen Vernichtungspolitik im zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998); idem, Kalkulierte Morde: Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999); U. Herbert, ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000); D. Pohl, Von der ‘Judenpolitik’ zum Judenmord: Der Distrikt Lublin des Generalgouvemements 1939–1944 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993); idem, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und Durchfuhmng eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1997); T. Sandkiihler, ‘Endlosung’ in Galizien: Der Judenmord in Ostpolen und die Rettungsinitiativen von Berthold Beitz 1941–1944 (Bonn: Dietz. 1996).

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  88. The best recent synthesis of work on the Nazi persecution of the Jews is P. Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung: Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1998). See also the essays by Browning and Pnhl in thic vnliimv

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  89. See in particular M. Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten: Das Fuhmngskorps des Reichssicherheitshaptamtes (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002), following on from the biography of Werner Best, a department head of the Security Police under Heydrich: U. Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien uber Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903–1989 (Bonn: Dietz. 1996).

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  90. For a recent detailed analysis of Hitler’s role in the Holocaust, see P. Longerich, The Unwritten Order: Hitler’s Role in the Final Solution (Stroud: Sutton, 2001).

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  1. Jeremy Noakes
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  1. Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

    Dan Stone

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© 2004 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Noakes, J. (2004). Hitler and the Third Reich. In: Stone, D. (eds) The Historiography of the Holocaust. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524507_3

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