Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany / Edition 1

by Robert Gellately

Overview

Debate still rages over how much ordinary Germans knew about the concentration camps and the Gestapo's activities during Hitler's reign. Now, in this well-documented and provocative volume, historian Robert Gellately argues that the majority of German citizens had quite a clear picture of the extent of Nazi atrocities, and continued to support the Reich to the bitter end.
Culling chilling evidence from primary news sources and citing dozens of case studies, Gellately shows how media reports and press stories were an essential dimension of Hitler's popular dictatorship. Indeed, a vast array of material on the concentration camps, the violent campaigns against social outsiders, and the Nazis' radical approaches to "law and order" was published in the media of the day, and was widely read by a highly literate population of Germans. Hitler, Gellately reveals, did not try to hide the existence of the Gestapo or of concentration camps. Nor did the Nazis try to cow the people into submission. Instead they set out to win converts by building on popular images, cherished ideals, and long-held phobias. And their efforts succeeded, Gellately concludes, for the Gestapo's monstrous success was due, in large part, to ordinary German citizens who singled out suspected "enemies" in their midst, reporting their suspicions and allegations freely and in a spirit of cooperation and patriotism.
Extensively documented, highly readable and illustrated with never-before-published photographs, Backing Hitler convincingly debunks the myth that Nazi atrocities were carried out in secret. From the rise of the Third Reich well into the final, desperate months of the war, the destruction of innocent lives was inextricably linked to the will of the German people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192802910
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/16/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	8.46(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.17(d)

About the Author

Robert Gellately is the Strassler Professor in Holocaust History at Clark University, and is the author of The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945. He lives in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Turning away from Weimar2. Police Justice3. Concentration Camps and Media Reports4. Shadows of War5. Social Outsiders6. Injustice and the Jews7. Special "Justice" for Foreign Workers8. Enemies in the Ranks9. Concentration Camps in Public Spaces10. Dictatorship and People at the End of the Third ReichConclusion

Editorial Reviews

"Books on the Holocaust and Nazism now number in the tens of thousands. Of that vast library, a handful of texts should be deemed essential reading for any serious student of the bloody and pathetic 20th century. Robert Gellately's Backing Hitler is among them."—Washington Post Book World

"Readers will notice that Gellately offers a far more sophisticated argument and more abundant evidence than Daniel Goldhagen's cause celebre, 'Hitler's Willing Executioners.' In truth, Gellately's work is what Goldhagen's book could have been, but wasn't; that is, a closely reasoned and tightly constructed analysis."—Publishers Weekly

"In this original and outstanding book, Gellately uses a wealth of new source materials, including the daily press, to examine the public face of the Nazi 'law and order' dictatorship, in the process contributing much to our understanding of the extent to which it basked in social consensus....This is a genuinely important book which deserves the widest possible readership."—Michael Burleigh, Washington and Lee University

"Superbly researched and convincingly argued, this path breaking study demonstrates that most Germans supported Hitler throughout the Nazi regime....A crucial contribution to our understanding of the relationship between consent and coercion in modern dictatorship."—Omer Bartov, Brown University

From the Publisher

Books on the Holocaust and Nazism now number in the tens of thousands. Of that vast library, a handful of texts should be deemed essential reading for any serious student of the bloody and pathetic 20th century. Robert Gellately's Backing Hitler is among them. Nazi crimes are frequently described as bestial, demonic or the acts of a handful of madmen and the hypnotized masses.....In sharp contrast, Gellately dispassionately documents that ordinary human beings organized the Holocaust, extermination camps and all....Gellately's stated aim -- "trying to cope with the full enormity of the many atrocities committed in the name of, and with the support of, so many Germans" -- focuses attention on those aspects of the Holocaust that are less titillating for television and far more difficult to face. Yet it is also these characteristics of systemic cruelty that remain most relevant for today's world.
— Washington Post Book World

Christopher Simpson

Using newspapers and radio broadcasts of the day as evidence, Gellately (The Gestapo and German Society), Strassler Professor in Holocaust History at Clark University, effectively demonstrates how "ordinary Germans" evolved into a powerful base of support for the Nazi regime. Although Hitler and the National Socialists had never garnered an outright majority in elections before 1933, the author convincingly shows that "the great majority of the German people soon became devoted to Hitler and they supported him to the bitter end in 1945." The Nazis achieved this political miracle by "consensus." The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci argued that political regimes could hardly expect to use unlimited terror against their subjects a technique combining the threat of terror and coercion would be more effective. Using Gramscian theory is hardly new in an analysis of Nazi Germany, but Gellately does make a provocative claim: that the Nazi use of terror against certain categories of "undesirables" (first Communists, Socialists and trade unionists, then Catholic and Protestant opponents, then the mentally and/or physically impaired, then the Jews and Gypsies) was purposively public and that most Germans agreed with such policies. Decrees, legislation, police actions and the concentration camps were not meant to be hidden from the German people, but in fact were extensively publicized. Some of the same arguments have been made in Adam Lebor and Roger Boyes's Seduced by Hitler, but readers will notice that Gellately offers a far more sophisticated argument and more abundant evidence than Daniel Goldhagen's cause célèbre, Hitler's Willing Executioners. In truth, Gellately's work is what Goldhagen's book could have been, but wasn't; that is, a closely reasoned and tightly constructed analysis.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gellately (Strassler Professor in Holocaust History, Clark Univ.) analyzes the role of "ordinary" Germans in the Nazi persecution of those deemed social and political outsiders. Under the guise of "law and order," the Nazis suspended regular jurisprudence and substituted arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Far from carrying out their activities in secret, the Nazis publicized them as steps to the social, political, and racial regeneration of Germany. Many ordinary Germans actively participated in this process, denouncing neighbors as "asocial" elements for associating with Jews or for "suspicious" activities. Denunciations derived from a variety of motivations personal grudges, economic self-interest, or ideological commitment with the full knowledge of what would happen to the victims. By effectively overturning the belief that Hitler and the Nazi party imposed their ideology upon the German people and maintained control through massed police terror, Gellately's book forces us to consider the role of the ordinary citizen in the maintenance of the Nazi dictatorship. His arguments are more sophisticated and ultimately more convincing than Daniel Goldhagen's in Hitler's Willing Executioners, which saw the German people's adherence as mono-causal (i.e., anti-Semitism). Recommended for all libraries. Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal