In Hitler's Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism
392
In Hitler's Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism
392eBook
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Overview
From acclaimed historian Michael Brenner, a mesmerizing portrait of Munich in the early years of Hitler's quest for power
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918–19, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his antisemitic ideas. Michael Brenner provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution.
In an electrifying narrative that takes readers from Hitler's return to Munich following the armistice to his calamitous Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Brenner demonstrates why the city's transformation is crucial for understanding the Nazi era and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Brenner describes how Hitler and his followers terrorized Munich's Jews and were aided by politicians, judges, police, and ordinary residents. He shows how the city's Jews responded to the antisemitic backlash in many different ways—by declaring their loyalty to the state, by avoiding public life, or by abandoning the city altogether.
Drawing on a wealth of previously unknown documents, In Hitler's Munich reveals the untold story of how a once-cosmopolitan city became, in the words of Thomas Mann, "the city of Hitler."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691205410 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 392 |
| File size: | 38 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface to the English-Language Edition xi
1 A Change of Perspective 1
"The Whole Thing, an Unspeakable Jewish Tragedy" 1
Jewish Revolutionaries Do Not a Jewish Revolution Make 11
The Good Old Days? 15
The "Jewish Question" Moves to Center Stage 21
2 Jewish Revolutionaries in a Catholic Land 25
Hanukkah 5679 (November 1918) 25
"It Has to Be My Jewish Blood That Is Incensed"-Kurt Eisner 27
"My Judaism … Lives in Everything That I Start and That I Am"-Gustav Landauer 57
"I Will Demonstrate Once More That I Am Someone from the Old Testament!"-Erich Mühsam 67
"But Am I Not … a Member of That People That for Millennia Has Been Persecuted, Harried, Martyrized and Slain?"-Ernst Toller 77
"Jewish Is How My Head Thinks, Russian How My Heart Feels"-Eugen Leviné 86
"Foreign Bolshevik Agents"-Jews in the Fight against the Council Republic 92
3 A Pogrom Atmosphere in Munich 98
Passover 5769 (April 1919) 98
"We Don't Want Any Bavarian Trotsky"-The Mood Shifts 103
"A Government of Jehovah's Wrath"-The Attitude of the Catholic Church 119
"To the Gallows"-Radicalization in Word and Deed 128
"The Trotskys Make the Revolution, and the Bronsteins Pay the Price"-Jewish Reactions 137
4 The Hotbed of Reaction 157
Rosh Hashanah 5681 (September 1920) 157
"The Movement … Needed a Site That Would Become an Example"-Hitler's Laboratory 160
"The Ostjuden Danger"-The First Expulsions of Jews 173
"Travelers, Avoid Bavaria!"-Manifestations of Violence 184
"Now Germany Has Its Dreyfus Trial"-A Legal Scandal and a Scandalous Legal System 200
5 The City of Hitler 229
Sukkoth 5684 (September 1923) 229
"All the Lazy and the Vicious … Rushed, as if Magically Drawn, to Munich"-The Capital of Antisemitism 230
"Tomorrow You'll All Be Hanging"-The Hot Autumn of 1923 238
"A Mockery of the German People"-Reverberations of 1923 261
6 A Variety of Perspectives 268
Gravestones 268
Life Journeys 274
Interpretations 280
Purim 5693 (March 1933) 289
Timeline 293
Acknowledgments 297
Abbreviations 301
Notes 303
Bibliography 341
Index 363
What People are Saying About This
“[This book] is entertaining, full of surprises, and enjoyable—a real thriller about the Bavarian Revolution.”—Mirjam Zadoff, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“Michael Brenner’s masterful book offers important lessons for us today about the fragility of democracies, the consequences of unchecked antisemitic conspiracy theories, and the willingness of self-serving political elites to aid and abet the rise to power of populist demagogues. This is a scintillating and profoundly important work of scholarship.”—John M. Efron, author of German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic“Brenner shows that in many respects it was the Bavarian capital that helped make Hitler what he became. Filled with characters notable for their brilliance or repulsiveness (and sometimes both), his narrative demolishes numerous myths and helps us understand how quickly and thoroughly apparently broad-minded folk can turn into racist bigots. A fine and necessary book.”—Frederick Taylor, author of 1939: A People’s History of the Coming of the Second World War“Set in what Thomas Mann recognized as ‘the city of Hitler’ already in 1923, this unusually intimate account of revolution and counterrevolution reveals how unexpectedly crossed relationships between Jews, revolutionaries, and antisemites turned unforgiving and lethal in a few short years.”—Peter Fritzsche, author of Hitler’s First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich"A striking, extremely important work. Brenner shows how the events in Munich were crucial to the rise of the Nazi movement and led to the antisemitic violence in the years after Hitler's ascension to power."—Michael Berkowitz, author of The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality"A dazzling book filled with vivid insights and poignant historical ironies on nearly every page. Brenner has written one of the most nuanced collective portraits of twentieth-century German Jewish lives and identities that I know."—Paul Hanebrink, author of A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism