The Third Reich

Head of History and Politics, Highgate School, London

CONTENTS

   Introduction to the Series

   Acknowledgements   

   Chronology   

   Who’s Who

  Glossary

   Maps 

  

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

 

1.    THE HISTORICAL DEBATE

   Can the Third Reich be ‘Historicised’? 

 

PART TWO: ANALYSIS   

 

2.    THE ORIGINS AND RISE OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM  

   The Ideological Roots  

   The Bismarckian Reich: An Incubator of National Socialism?  

   The German Revolution, 1918–19: A Turning Point that did not Turn?

   Adolf Hitler and the Formation of the NSDAP, 1919–24

   The Renaissance of the Nazi Party, 1925–30

   Nazi Voters, 1930–32 

   The Road to Power, September 1930–January 1933

 

3.    THE LEGAL REVOLUTION AND THE CONSOLIDATION OF POWER, 1933–34   

   The Dissolution of the Reichstag and the Election of 5 March 1933  

   The ‘Revolution from Below’ and the Enabling Act  

   The Process of Gleichschaltung

   The Churches  

   The Defeat of the Second Revolution

 

4.    STATE, PARTY AND FÜHRER: THE GOVERNMENT OF NAZI GERMANY, 1933–39 

   Ministries and ‘Supreme Reich Authorities’, 1933–38  

   Himmler and the SS State   

   The Centralisation of the Reich 

   The Civil Service

   The Party   

   The Role of Hitler   

  

 5.     THE ECONOMY, 1933–39

   Work Creation and Economic Recovery, 1933–35

   Agriculture  

   The Mittelstand

   Schacht and the Financing of German Rearmament  

   The Four Year Plan

         Industrialists and the Four Year Plan: winners and losers

   Rearmament and the German Economy, 1936–39   

 

6.    THE PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY: GERMAN SOCIETY AND THE THIRD REICH, 1933–39

The Work of the Reich Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda  

   Education and Youth

   The Peasantry  

   Women and the Family

p;   Nazi Health and Eugenic Policies  

   The ‘Asocials’ and Homosexuals

   Gypsies, Part-Africans and the Slav Minorities 

   The Jews

  The Germans and the Jews

 

8.    FOREIGN POLICY, 1933–39   

   Hitler’s Priorities, 1933–37

   The Anschluss 

   The Destruction of Czechoslovakia

   The Polish Crisis and the Outbreak of War  

 

9.    GERMANY, EUROPE AND THE WORLD, 1939–45  

   The British Problem, 1940–41 

   The Decision to Attack Soviet Russia

   From European to World War, 1941–45

   Europe under German Occupation, 1939–44

   ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ and Settlement Policies in Eastern Europe  

   The Holocaust 

 

10. THE HOME FRONT, 1939–45

   Disintegration of the Führer State

   The Increasing Power of the Political Party and the SS 

   The War Economy

   Food Supplies and Rationing

Solving the Labour Crisis in the War Industries

   The Impact of War on the German People, 1942–45

   The End of the Hitler Regime

   Postscript to the Third Reich: The Doenitz Government 

 

11. THE GERMAN OPPOSITION  

   Resistance and Resistenz  

   Opposition from the Churches  

   Opposition on the Left 

   The Challenge of Youth Culture   

   Resistance by the Military and Conservative Elites   

   The Road to 20 July 1944  

   Why was there no German Revolution in 1945?   

  

PART THREE: ASSESSMENT

 

12. THE THIRD REICH IN RETROSPECT   

   Hitler’s Rise to Power  

   The Nazi regime

   How 'modern'as the Third Reich  

   The Legacy of Nazi Germany

PART FOUR: DOCUMENTS   nbsp; Guide to Further Reading   

     References

 Index