2nd Edition

Hitler's Germany Origins, Interpretations, Legacies

By Roderick Stackelberg Copyright 2008
    416 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    416 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Praise for the first edition:

    'This is an important new textbook on the Nazi period which is geared to intermediate and advanced undergraduates and will also interest general audiences ... this book is a real winner and deserves wide use.' - Bruce Campbell, German Studies Review 

    'An excellent job... provides a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of the origins of National Socialism in Germany, Hitler's rise to power, and the nature of the Nazi regime after 1933... no small achievement.' - David Crew, University of Texas, Austin

    Hitler’s Germany provides a comprehensive narrative history of Nazi Germany and sets it in the wider context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century German history. Roderick Stackelberg analyzes how it was possible that a national culture of such creativity and achievement could generate such barbarism and destructiveness.

    This second edition has been updated throughout to incorporate recent historical research and engage with current debates in the field. It includes

    • an expanded introduction focusing on the hazards of writing about Nazi Germany
    • an extended analysis of fascism, totalitarianism, imperialism, and ideology
    • a broadened contextualisation of antisemitism
    • discussion of the Holocaust including the euthanasia program and the role of eugenics
    • new chapters on Nazi social and economic policies and the structure of government as well as on the role of culture, the arts, education and religion
    • additional maps, tables, and a chronology
    • a fully updated bibliography.

    Exploring the controversies surrounding Nazism and its afterlife in historiography and historical memory, Hitler’s Germany provides students with an interpretive framework for understanding this extraordinary episode in German and European history.

    Preface to the Second Edition.  Chronology.  Introduction: the Problems of Writing About National Socialism  1. Fascism and the Conservative Tradition: Fascist Ideology, Constituency, and Conditions for its Growth  2. The Problem of German Unity: Absolutism and Particularism  3. The German Empire: the Containment of Democracy, Social Imperialism, and the Road to War  4. Germanic Ideology: Nationalism, Vulgarized Idealism, and Antisemitism  5. The First World War: The Crisis of Imperial Germany  6. The Weimar Republic and the Weakness of Liberal Democracy  7. The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: the Great Depression and the Rise of the Nazis  8. The Nazi Consolidation of Power, 1933–1934  9. Economy, Society, and the State in the Third Reich  10. Education, Culture, Religion, and Eugenics in the Third Reich  11. Persecution of the Jews, 1933–1939  12. The Origins of the Second World War  13. The Second World War: From European to Global War, 1939–1941  14. The Second World War: From Triumph to Defeat, 1942–1945  15. The Holocaust  16. Continuities and New Beginnings: the Aftermath of National Socialism and War  17. The Historians` Debate: the Place of Hitler`s Reich in German History and Memory.  Select Bibliography

    Biography

    Roderick Stackelberg is Robert K. and Ann J. Powers Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Gonzaga University. His publications include The Routledge Companion to Nazi Germany (2007) and with Sally A. Winkle, The Nazi Germany Sourcebook (2002).

    ‘The first edition of Hitler’s Germany was praised for its usefulness for students of Nazi Germany and for the general reader, and the second edition is equally so. Stackelberg writes in plain English and brilliantly summarises even the most complicated areas of the Nazi period and the most arcane historical debates. This is a first class work of synthesis …There is good reason for every school library to have a copy of this book and for every teacher of the history of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany to have one too. So as they say, rush out and buy it.’ – History Teaching Review

    Praise for the first edition:

    'This is an important new textbook on the Nazi period which is geared to intermediate and advanced undergraduates and will also interest general audiences ... This book is a real winner and deserves wide use.' – Bruce Campbell, German Studies Review 

    'An excellent job ... provides a comprehensive and sophisticated analysis of the origins of National Socialism in Germany, Hitler's rise to power, and the nature of the Nazi regime after 1933 ... no small achievement.' – David Crew, University of Texas, Austin