Hitler and the uniqueness of nazism

Journal of Contemporary History

Volumn 39, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 239-254

  Kershaw, Ian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248049352     PISSN: 00220094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0022009404042130     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. A.J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History (London 1945). 'In the course of a thousand years, the Germans have experienced everything except normality', wrote Taylor. Only the normal person . . . has never set his stamp on German history' (paperback edn, 1961, 1). Any positive qualities in Germans were in his eyes 'synonymous with ineffectiveness': 'There were, and I daresay are, many millions of well-meaning kindly Germans; but what have they added up to politically?', he asked (viii-ix). The attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 was, for him, 'the climax, the logical conclusion of German history' (260).
2. The long pedigree of German abnormality, and its climax in nazism, is also a theme of Rohan O'Butler, The Roots of National Socialism (London 1941);
3. William Montgomery McGovern, From Luther to Hitler. The History of Nazi-Fascist Philosophy (London 1946);
4. and, in essence, of William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York 1960).
5. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners (New York 1996).
6. Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe (Wiesbaden 1946);
7. Gerhard Ritter, Europa und die deutsche Frage. Betrachtungen über die geschichtliche Eigenart des deutschen Staatsdenkens (Munich 1948).
8. Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht (Düsseldorf 1961).
9. Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (London 1968).
10. Among Hans-Ulrich Wehler's prolific output, Das Kaiserreich 1871-1918 (Göttingen 1973), serves as a paradigmatic expression of the thesis.
11. He has modified, though maintained, the Sonderweg approach in his magisterial work, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd.3, 1849-1914 (Munich 1995), 460-89, 1284-95.
12. Another prominent proponent of the Sonderweg thesis, Jürgen Kocka, put the case succinctly in his article, 'German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg', Journal of Contemporary History, 23, 1 (January 1988), 3-16.
13. David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History (Oxford 1984).
14. Detlev J.K. Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik. Krisenjahre der Klassischen Moderne (Frankfurt am Main 1987), 271 for the explicit rejection of the Sonderweg approach.
15. On this point, Peter Pulzer, 'Special Paths or Main Roads? Making Sense of German History', Elie Kedourie Memorial Lecture, 22 May 2002 (as yet unpublished) offers some valuable reflections and insights.
16. I explored these in some detail in the second chapter of my The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (4th edn, London 2000).
17. See also my reservations about the totalitarianism concept in the essay 'Totalitarianism Revisited: Nazism and Stalinism in Comparative Perspective', Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 23 (1994), 23-40.
18. Among a library of works on fascism, Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London 1991), is outstanding in conceptualization
19. and Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 (London 1995), in typology, while Michael Mann's as yet unpublished study, Fascists, offers the most profound comparative analysis undertaken of the supporters of fascist movements, their motivation, and their actions. I am extremely grateful to Professor Mann for a preview of this important work and its interlinked, companion volume, The Dark-Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (not yet published).
20. Recent anthologies on totalitarianism, a concept revived since the fall of Soviet communism, include Eckhard Jesse (ed.), Totalitarismus im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine Bilanz der internationalen Forschung (2nd edn, Bonn 1999);
21. and Enzo Traverso, Le Totalitarisme: le XXe siècle en débat (Paris 2001).
22. Martin Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers (Munich 1969), 9.
23. Karl Dietrich Bracher, 'The Role of Hitler' in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism. A Reader's Guide (Harmondsworth 1979), 201.
24. See the directly opposed contributions of Klaus Hildebrand and Hans Mommsen in Michael Bosch (ed.), Persönlichkeit und Struktur in der Geschichte (Düsseldorf 1977), 55-71
25. and further references to the controversy in Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, chap. 4.
26. Martin Broszat's brilliant essay, 'Soziale Motivation und Führer-Bindung des Nationalsozialismus', Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 18 (1970), 392-409, also amounted to a subtle assault on the 'Hitlerism' argument.
27. Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler (London 2001), for the argument, which has encountered widespread criticism, that Hitler was a homosexual.
28. The syphilis argument, outrightly rejected by those who have most thoroughly explored Hitler's medical history, notably Fritz Redlich, Hitler. Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet (New York/Oxford 1999)
29. and Ernst Günther Schenck, Patient Hitler. Eine medizinische Biographie (Düsseldorf 1989), has recently resurfaced in an investigation - the most thorough imaginable of this topic - by Deborah Hayden, to whom I am grateful for a preview of this, as yet, unpublished work.
30. The debate ensuing from the term is explored in my Nazi Dictatorship, op. cit., chap. 4.
31. Ian Kershaw, Hitler. A Profile in Power (London 1991, 2nd edn 2001);
32. Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris (London 1998);
33. Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis (London 2000).
34. For a summary of the advances in research, see Ulrich Herbert (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik 1939-1945 (Frankfurt am Main 1998), 9-66.
35. Much of the new research is incorporated in the excellent survey by Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung. Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich/Zurich 1998).
36. First formulated in Hans Mommsen, 'Der Nationalsozialismus. Kumulative Radikalisierung und Selbstzerstörung des Regimes', Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon, Bd.16 (Mannheim 1976), 785-90.
37. I first directly deployed Weber's concept to help explore the shaping of popular opinion in 'The Führer Image and Political Integration: The Popular Conception of Hitler in Bavaria during the Third Reich' in Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (eds), Der 'Führerstaat': Mythos und Realität. Studien zur Struktur und Politik des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart 1981), 133-61
38. 'Alltägliches und Außeralltägliches: ihre Bedeutung für die Volksmeinung 1933-1939' in Detlev Peukert and Jürgen Reulecke (eds), Die Reihen fast geschlossen. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus (Wuppertal 1981), 273-92
39. and, more extensively, in The 'Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford 1987).
40. I deployed it more directly to examine the nature of Hitler's power in Hitler: A Profile in Power, op. cit.
41. as well as in a number of essays, such as 'The Nazi State: an Exceptional State?', New Left Review, 176 (1989), 47-67
42. and '"Working towards the Führer": Reflections on the Nature of the Hitler Dictatorship', Contemporary European History, 2 (1993), 103-18.
43. The concept is also used by M. Rainer Lepsius, 'Charismatic Leadership: Max Weber's Model and its Applicability to the Rule of Hitler' in Carl Friedrich Graumann and Serge Moscovici (eds), Changing Conceptions of Leadership (New York 1986), 53-66.
44. Griffin, in particular, has made this the focal point of his interpretation of fascism. See his Nature of Fascism, op. cit., 26, 32ff.
45. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Vienna/ Munich 1918-22).
46. For the term, see Richard Bessel, Germany after the first World War (Oxford 1993), 262.
47. See, for this, especially Ulrich Herbert, '"Generation der Sachlichkeit": Die völkische Studentenbewegung der frühen zwanziger Jahre in Deutschland' in Frank Bajohr, Werner Johe and Uwe Lohalm (eds), Zivilisation und Barbarei. Die widersprüchlichen Potentiale der Moderne (Hamburg 1991), 115-44.
48. See the fine study by Michael Wildt, Generation des Unbedingten. Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes (Hamburg 2002).
49. The perception of nazism as a form of political religion, advanced as long ago as 1938 by the émigré Eric Voegelin, Die politischen Religionen (Vienna 1938), has recently gained a new lease of life.
50. Among others who have found the notion attractive, Michael Burleigh adopted it, alongside 'totalitarianism', as a major conceptual prop of his interpretation in The Third Reich. A New History (London 2000).
51. See also Burleigh's essay, 'National Socialism as a Political Religion' in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 1, 2 (2000), 1-26.
52. It has also been deployed for fascist Italy by Emilio Gentile, 'Fascism as Political Religion', Journal of Contemporary History, 25, 2-3 (May-June 1990), 229-51
53. and idem, The Sacralisation of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA 1996).
54. See also Gentile's 'The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretations and Reflections on the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism' in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 1, 1 (2000), 18-55.
55. For sharp criticism of its application to nazism, see Michael Rißmann, Hitlers Gott. Vorsehungsglaube und Sendungsbewußtsein des deutschen Diktators (Zurich/Munich 2001), 191-7;
56. and Griffin, Nature of Fascism, op. cit., 30-2.
57. Griffin, once critical, has, however, changed his mind and now favours the use of the concept, as can be seen in his 'Nazism's "Cleansing Hurricane" and the Metamorphosis of Fascist Studies' in W. Loh (ed.), 'Faschismus' kontrovers (Paderborn 2002).
58. Cited in Albrecht Tyrell, Vom 'Trommler' zum 'Führer' (Munich 1975), 163.
59. Cited in Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik (3rd edn, Munich 1992), 217.
60. Georg Schott, Das Volksbuch vom Hitler (Munich 1924), 18.
61. See Piero Melograni, 'The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini's Italy', Journal of Contemporary History, 11, 4 (October 1976), 221-37;
62. Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power (London 1973), 72ff, 166-75;
63. and, most recently the excellent political biography by R.J.B. Bosworth, Benito Mussolini (London 2002), chaps 6-11. It took several years before the customary mode of address and reference to Mussolini changed from Presidente to Duce and some among his old comrades never took to the 'heroic' form.
64. See R.J.B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London 1998), 62, note 14.
65. A valuable study of the incomparably more dynamic impact of the Führer cult than the Duce cult on state administration and bureaucracy is provided by Maurizio Bach, Die charismatischen Führerdiktaturen. Drittes Reich und italienischer Faschismus im Vergleich ihrer Herrschaftsstrukturen (Baden-Baden 1991).
66. Walter Rauscher, Hitler und Mussolini. Macht, Krieg und Terror (Graz/Vienna/Cologne 2001), provides a parallel biography of the two dictators, though offers no structural comparison.
67. See Paul Preston, Franco. A Biography (London 1993), 187ff.
68. See Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System. Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (London 1985), 57-71, 268-76;
69. and also Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin, Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge 1997), chaps 1, 4 and 5.
70. For the term, see Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, op. cit., 529.
71. Gerald Fleming, Hitler und die Endlösung. 'Es ist des Führers Wunsch' (Wiesbaden/Munich 1982), shows how frequently the phrase was invoked by those involved in the extermination of the Jews.
72. The memorable, though nonetheless misleading, concept was coined by Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil (London 1963).