Nazism As Fascism: Violence, Ideology, And The Ground Of Consent In Germany 1930-1945

257 Pages·2013·4.031 MB·English

by  Geoff Eley

NAZISM AS FASCISM
Offering a dynamic and wide-ranging examination of the key issues at the heart of
the study of German fascism, Nazismas Fascism brings together a selection of Geoff
Eley’s most important writings on Nazism and the Third Reich.
Featuring a wealth of revised, updated and new material, Nazism as Fascism
analyses the historiography of the Third Reich and its main interpretive approa-
ches. Themes include:
(cid:1) detailed reflectiononthetenetsand characterof Naziideologyand institutional
practices;
(cid:1) examination of the complicated processes that made Germans willing to think
of themselves as Nazis;
(cid:1) discussion of Nazism’s presence in the everyday lives of the German people;
(cid:1) consideration of the place of women under the Third Reich.
In addition, this book also looks at the larger questions of the historical legacy of
fascist ideology and charts its influence and development from its origin in 1930s
Germanythroughtoitsintellectualandspatialinfluenceonamodernsocietyincrisis.
In Nazism as Fascism, Geoff Eley engages with Germany’s political past in order
to evaluate the politics of the present day and to understand what happens when
the basic principles of democracy and community are violated. This book is
essential reading not only for students of German history, but for anyone with an
interest in history and politics more generally.
Geoff Eley is the Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor at the University
of Ann Arbor, Michigan. His previous work includes A Crooked Line: From Cultural
HistorytotheHistoryofSociety(2005)andForgingDemocracy:TheHistoryoftheLeftin
Europe, 1885–2000 (2002).
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NAZISM AS FASCISM
Violence, Ideology, and the
Ground of Consent in
–
Germany 1930 1945
Geoff Eley
Firstpublished2013
byRoutledge
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SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
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©2013GeoffEley
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LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Eley,Geoff,1949-
Nazismasfascism:violence,ideology,andthegroundofconsentinGermany
1930-1945/GeoffEley.
pagescm
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Fascism--Germany--Historiography.2.Nationalsocialism--Historiography.
3.Germany--History--1933-1945.I.Title.
JC481.E352013
320.53’3094309043--dc23
2012047899
ISBN:978-0-415-81262-7(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-415-81263-4(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-203-69430-5(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylorandFrancisBooks
CONTENTS
Preface vi
1 Origins, Post-Conservatism, and 1933: Nazism as a Breach 1
2 Driving for Rule, Extracting Consent: Bases of Political Order 13
under Fascism
3 The Return of Ideology: Everyday Life, the Volksgemeinschaft, 59
and the Nazi Appeal
4 Missionaries of the Volksgemeinschaft: Ordinary Women, 91
Nazification, and the Social
5 Empire, Ideology, and the East: Thoughts on Nazism’s Spatial 131
Imaginary
6 Putting the Holocaust into History: Genocide, Imperial 156
Hubris, and the Racial State
7 Where Are We Now with Theories of Fascism? 198
Index 226
PREFACE
While the underlying concerns and commitments go back a lot further, this book
brings together my thinking about Nazism from the past 10 to 15 years. It is
meant,aboveall,tohelp withtheurgencyofourpresentdiscontents. Byreflecting
in detail on the historiography of the Third Reich and its main interpretive
approaches, it seeks to draw out a number of overarching themes, including
the character of Nazi ideology, the forms of its presence in everyday life, and the
processes that enabled Germans to turn themselves into Nazis. These in their turn
build to a larger argument about fascism. If we can once historicize fascism by
understanding its early twentieth-century dynamics, I want to argue, we will grasp
far better its possible manifestations now. By studying its earlier forms in this way,
wenotonlygiveitapast,butenableageneralconcepttobeabstracted,oneusable
for other settings and other times, including the present. The menacing qualities of
our current political moment, country by country, make this task pressingly
important. A layering of crisis – the brokenness of polities and the collapse of
civility; neoliberal transformations of capitalism and the transnationalizing of labor
markets; widening extremes of social inequality; social calamities and political dis-
orders resulting from global environmental catastrophe; a climate of fear where
“security” trumps any other consideration; international rivalries for resources –
makesitimperative.Thoseofuswhoknowaboutearlier,differingbutcomparable
crisescanhelpwiththeworkoftheorizing.Whetherspatiallyormetaphorically,in
the United States or elsewhere, there exist zones of exception already actualizing a
politicsthat comes dangerously close to what happened before. A portable concept
of fascism helps to make these dangers legible.
For anyone concerned about the resilience of democratic forms in the early
twenty-first century, coming to terms with Nazism – with the ease of a society’s
descent toward violence and barbarism – has to retain its urgency. The pursuit of
that questionledmeinmyearliestworktostudythepolitical falloutfromthesocial
Preface vii
consequences of Germany’s capitalist transformation between the 1880s and 1920s,
as that seemed an excellent means of clarifying why Germany became so vulnerable
to fascism lateron,whetherinthecrisisyearsof1929to1933orthecounter-revolu-
tionaryviolence of ten years before. In contrast to those historians who stressed the
baleful effects of longstanding pre-1914 continuities, the backwardness of author-
itarian “pre-industrial traditions” that supposedly kept Germany from becoming
“modern,” I urged the nature of the “fascism-producing crises” themselves (1929
to 1933, 1918 to 1923) as the best place to begin.1 That could allow us to bring
thepre-1914yearsintomorehelpfulandrealisticperspective.Ratherthandefining
the origins of fascism per se, including its essential German characteristics, a pre-war
crisis of right-wing radicalization in the early 1900s brought some key enabling
potentials,whatIcalled“avitalconditionoffuturepossibilityfortheemergenceof
aGerman fascism.”2 Having established inthis way abetter ground for judging the
question of continuity as the relation between the 1920s and the 1900s, I could
then go back to the immediacies of the fascism-producing crisis itself. An earlier
generalizing essay was the result, laying some lasting foundations for the discussion
that brings this book to a close.3
During 2001 to 2002 while on sabbatical in Irvine, California, I updated my
knowledge of Third Reich historiography by reading my way through all of the
burgeoning new scholarship.4 It seemed to me then, as a German historian grap-
pling with Nazism from outside of the immediate field, that I could do useful
service by making that new wealth of historiography more widely available.
InterestinNazismhasneverceasedtoexcitepublicinterestontheverybroadestof
fronts,afterall,whetherfromvarietiesofethicalandpoliticalconcern,fromdiverse
grounds of empathic identification, or simply from dramatic and sometimes lurid
curiosity. In whichever case, German historians have counsel to provide. For
facultyandgraduatestudentsneedingaccesstothemorespecializedscholarship,for
teachers and students seekingthe same kind ofguidance, and for anyreader wanting
a way into these difficult and challenging questions – questions that sometimes
require unfamiliar language and ideas – my interconnected treatments may be of
some help.
There is a clear politics to this book. It considers what happens when democ-
racy, the rule of law, and the rights of citizenship are all swept away. It explores
primary aspects of what comes in their place. It asks after the kinds of community
imagined and created for a society in which fascists had their way – where equal-
ities under the law, respect for differences, protections for those without power or
property, and the principles of fellow feeling and human kindness were all brutally
discontinued. What happened when the democratic gains secured so painfully
betweenthelatenineteenthcentury andtheearly 1920s were violently takenback?
How did the new regime set about building its own forms of exclusionary and
coercively secured solidarity? How were Germans made into Nazis? Conversely,
how far were people able to push back? Under circumstances of Nazi rule, how
didthenon-Nazismanagetogoonmakingalife–notjusttheoutrightopponents
and dissenters, but the many different categories of the apolitical, the pragmatic,
viii Preface
and the indifferent, the thoughtlessly patriotic and conformist, and everyone who
just“wentalong,”allthosedescribedthesedayssomewhatreductivelyas“bystanders”?
“Coming to terms with the [Nazi] past” (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) requires putting
themostbasicofquestions–thoseconcerningdemocracyandcitizenship,community
and the nation, differences among populations, and the elementary decencies of
living together in a society. Under the Third Reich, those values of decency
became anathema. Revisiting this past helps to remind us just how essential, if
demanding, they have to remain.
Early versions of Chapter 2 were presented in lectures and seminars at the
UniversitiesofMelbourne,Sydney,andNewSouthWales(March2002),University
of California, Irvine (April 2002), University of Nottingham (October 2003), Yale
University (January 2006), the German Historical Institute in London (May 2007),
and the Pembroke Center at Brown University (October 2011). Elements of
Chapters 3 and 4 were first ventured in reviews published by Signs (14:3, spring
1989), German Politics and Society (24–25, Winter 1991–1992), Gender and History
(17, 2005), and WerkstattGeschichte (40, 2005). A different version of Chapter 5
appeared in the proceedings of a conference on “Space, Identity, and National
Socialism” at the University of Loughborough (May 2010), where it began as a
closing comment.5 It was also presented to the Eisenberg Institute of Historical
StudiesattheUniversityofMichigan(January2012),King’sCollegeLondon(May
2012), and the Triangle Intellectual History Seminar at the National Humanities
Center in North Carolina (September 2012). Distantly related to an essay I wrote
in 1983, Chapter 6 began as the Bernard Weiner Holocaust Memorial Lecture at
Stetson University in April 2011.6 Written originally for the School of Criticism
and Theory in Ithaca, New York (June 2009), Chapter 7 was presented to audi-
ences at Emory University (November 2009), Birkbeck College (May 2010), the
Anthropology–History Symposium at the University of Michigan (October2010),
and the University of California, Irvine (March 2011). I am enormously grateful for
each of these invitations and opportunities. The resulting discussions always moved
my thinking crucially along.
I would like to thank Ken Garner, who helped invaluably in the final prepara-
tion ofthemanuscript.AtRoutledge,Vicky Petershelped guidemythinking over
many years about this and an associated project. More recently, the support of
Michael Strang and Laura Mothersole was also extraordinarily helpful.
As always I am hugely indebted to the ideas and inspiration of many colleagues
and friends, whether on the occasions listed above, or in the form of discussions
and running conversation, critical readings and other kinds of input, or simply the
continuityofintellectualfriendshipandcollaboration.ToLaurenBerlantIowethe
original urging to make my thinking about Nazism more widely available as an
argument about fascism. Whatever clarity I have achieved on the subject owes an
enormous amount to Jane Caplan in conversations covering most of an intellectual
lifetime. By their invitations, Erica Carter, Vinayak Chaturvedi, Malachi Hacohen,
Eric Kurlander, Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, Katie Trumpener, Chris Szejnmann,
and Maiken Umbach provided especially good occasions for venturing my ideas.
Preface ix
For the actual writing of the book, the following proved wonderful inter-
locutors, offering input of many different kinds, from recondite citations to chal-
lenging questions and thinking of the largest kind: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Anne Berg,
DonaldBloxham,KathleenCanning,RitaChin,JessicaDubow,AtinaGrossmann,
Julia Hell, Jennifer Jenkins, Alf Lüdtke, Bertrand Metton, Bob Moeller, Bradley
Naranch, Gina Morantz-Sanchez, Dirk Moses, Roberta Pergher, Mark Roseman,
Scott Spector, Richard Steigmann-Gall, George Steinmetz, Dan Stone, Ron Suny,
DennisSweeney,JuliaAdeneyThomas,AdamTooze,MichaelWildt,andGerhard
Wolf. At the very final stage, Donald Bloxham, Kathleen Canning, Dirk Moses,
Dan Stone, and Julia Adeney Thomas gave me indispensable close readings. Julia
Thomas deserves the greatest thanks of all. She challenged me to think more
clearly about how fascism should be approached comparatively, particularly in its
global dimensions with respect to Japan. She guided me through the complicated
literatures for that purpose, while a Workshop on “Fascisms Then and Now: Italy,
Japan, and Germany” that we organized together at Notre Dame (October 2012)
gave shape and direction at a crucial last stage of my writing. By pushing me to
think more searchingly about fascisms elsewhere, especially in relation to resources,
empire, space, and environment, she made my German arguments more pointed
andprecise.TheclosingChapter7,withitsthoughtsonthepresent,gainedhugely
asaresult.Finally,shereadeachofthechaptersastheywerewritten,withthevery
best of critical eyes. Whatever virtues my book might possess were made possible
by all of this help. The faults are entirely my own.
Notes
1 Here I am alluding to the so-called Sonderweg thesis (“special path”), which explained
Nazismbydeep-historicaldevelopmentalpeculiaritiesseparatingGermanyfrom“theWest.”
Forthecritique,seeD.BlackbournandG.Eley,ThePeculiaritiesofGermanHistory:Bourgeois
SocietyandPoliticsinNineteenth-CenturyGermany,Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,1984.
2 G.Eley,ReshapingtheGermanRight:RadicalNationalismandPoliticalChangeafterBismarck,
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991; orig. edn. 1980, p361. This was the
book’s very lastsentence. I am returning intensively tothose questions in a newbook
called Genealogies of Nazism: Conservatives, Radical Nationalists, Fascists in Germany,
1860–1930,forthcoming.
3 G.Eley,“WhatProducesFascism:Pre-IndustrialTraditionsoraCrisisoftheCapitalist
State?,” in Eley, From Unification to Nazism: Reinterpreting the German Past, London:
AllenandUnwin,1986, orig.pub.1983,pp254–82.
4 SeeG.Eley,“Hitler’sSilentMajority?ConformityandResistanceundertheThirdReich,”
MichiganQuarterly Review,2003,vol.XLII,no. 2–3,2003, pp389–425 and550–83.
5 C.-C.W.SzejnmannandM.Umbach(eds)Heimat,Region,andEmpire:NewApproaches
toSpatialIdentitiesinNationalSocialistGermany,Houndmills:PalgraveMacmillan,2012,
pp256–79.
6 “Holocaust History,” London Review of Books, 3–17 March 1983, pp6–9. Other parts
of Chapter 6 were first tried out in “Ordinary Germans, Nazism, and Judeocide,” in
G. Eley (ed.) The Goldhagen Effect. History, Memory, Nazism: Facing the German Past,
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, pp1–32. See also G. Eley, “Nazism,
Politics, and the Image of the Past: Thoughts on the West German Historikerstreit,
1986–87,” PastandPresent,1988, vol.121,pp171–208.