Life and Death in the Third Reich

by Fritzsche, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780674034655
• ISBN10: 0674034651
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-30
• Publisher: Belknap Pr

Summary

On January 30, 1933, hearing about the celebrations for Hitlerrs"s assumption of power, Erich Ebermayer remarked bitterly in his diary, "We are the losers, definitely the losers." Learning of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, which made Jews non-citizens, he raged, "hate is sown a million-fold." Yet in March 1938, he wept for joy at the Anschluss with Austria: "Not to want it just because it has been achieved by Hitler would be folly."In a masterful work, Peter Fritzsche deciphers the puzzle of Nazismrs"s ideological grip. Its basic appeal lay in the Volksgemeinschaft-a "peoplers"s community" that appealed to Germans to be part of a great project to redress the wrongs of the Versailles treaty, make the country strong and vital, and rid the body politic of unhealthy elements. The goal was to create a new national and racial self-consciousness among Germans. For Germany to live, others-especially Jews-had to die. Diaries and letters reveal Germansrs" fears, desires, and reservations, while showing how Nazi concepts saturated everyday life. Fritzsche examines the efforts of Germans to adjust to new racial identities, to believe in the necessity of war, to accept the dynamic of unconditional destruction-in short, to become Nazis.Powerful and provocative, Life and Death in the Third Reich is a chilling portrait of how ideology takes hold.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Reviving the Nation

"Heil Hitler!"

How Far Did Germans Support the Nazis?

Volksgemeinschaft, or the People's Community

Consuming the Nation

Unter Uns, or Nazism's Audiovisual Space

Racial Grooming

Aryan Passports

Biology and the National Revolution

Seeing like an Aryan

The Camp

Unworthy Life

The Assault on German Jews

Empire of Destruction

Writing Letters

The Imperial Project

The Expansion of the German Empire

Final Solutions to the "Jewish Problem"

The Deportation of German Jews

The Holocaust

Intimate Knowledge

Train Station

Jewish Witnesses

German Witnesses

Perpetrators and Victims

Imagining the End of the War

Reading Catastrophe

Notes

Index

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