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"A Third Reich, as I See It"
Politics, Society, and Private Life in the Diaries of Nazi Germany, 1933-1939
Translated by Bernard Heise
Published by: Indiana University Press
666 Pages
- eBook
- 9780253065353
- Published: April 2023
$59.99
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With the beginning of the National Socialist dictatorship, Germany not only experienced a deep political turning point but the private life of Germans also changed fundamentally. The Nazi regime had far-reaching ideas about how the individual should think and act.
In "A Third Reich, as I See It" Janosch Steuwer examines the private diaries of ordinary Germans written between 1933 and 1939 and shows how average citizens reacted to the challenges of National Socialism. Some felt the urge and desire to adapt to the political circumstances. Others felt compelled to do so. They all contributed to the realization of the vision of a homogeneous, conflict-free, and "racially pure" society.
In a detailed manner and with a convincing sense of the bigger picture, Steuwer shows how the tense efforts of people to fit in, and at the same time to preserve existing opinions and self-conceptions, led to a close intertwining of the private and the political.
"A Third Reich, as I See It" offers a surprisingly new look at how the ideological visions of National Socialism found their way into the everyday reality of Germans.
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations and Terms
Introduction
Part One
1. The Social Dynamics of the "Seizure of Power"
2. The Search for a Personal Stance toward the Nazi Regime
3. Establishing a Personal Stance toward the Regime While under Social Observation
Part Two
4. The National Socialist Education Project
5. Political Self-Formation in the Nazi Education Project
Part Three
6. A New Political Culture in a New Political System
7. The Government and Its Volk
8. The Private and the Limits of the National Socialist Political System
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Persons
Index of Subjects
Janosch Steuwer is a historian of modern Germany and Europe. After positions at Universities of Bochum and Zurich, he is working at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. His research interests cover a wide range of topics, such as the history of childhood since the 1970s and the history of National Socialism and its aftermath. In particular, he is concerned with the ways in which ordinary people experienced and understood the periods they lived through.
"This is a genuinely remarkable book. The thinking behind it is sophisticated and well-founded, offering a telling portrait of popular responses to Nazi Germany."
~Mark Roseman, Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, Indiana University
"Janosch Steuwer's magnificent and original analysis of keeping a diary probes the way individuals composed themselves during the Nazi period as they negotiated the push and pull of collective exuberance while ostensibly remaining true to themselves. This is a story not of the Nazi seizure of power but of the Nazi seizure of the self, a story not of coercion but of desire."
~Peter Fritzsche, University of Illinois, author of An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler
"Janosch Steuwer powerfully analyzes that Nazism was shaped by Germans who strove to define their own place within it. His path-breaking book, based on a numerous contemporary diaries, should be of interest to all historians of European dictatorships"
~Moritz Föllmer, University of Amsterdam, author of Culture in the Third Reich
"A milestone for the history of experience and emotions of the Third Reich."
~Michael Wildt, Humboldt University of Berlin, author of Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft and the Dynamics of Racial Exclusion
"How did ordinary Germans buy in to the Nazi regime? This question has fascinated and baffled historians for more years, usually producing answers which couple opportunism, peer pressure and fear. Sifting carefully through a large number of diaries, Janosch Steuwer offers the first answer to this question based consistently on the subjective sources produced by individuals themselves. Self-fashioning, wilful ignorance and projecting their own wishes onto the regime all come to the fore here, giving a far more nuanced and also much more morally and emotionally active sense of how Germans persuaded themselves that this was their government. A tremendous achievement and a must read book in the field."
~Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939-45
"In "A Third Reich, as I See It" Janosch Steuwer has mined 140 diaries written between 1933 and 1939 to give us a fascinating picture of how Germans reacted to Nazi rule and reworked their sense of self to find their place in the new order. Steuwer has assembled a rich cast of characters, ranging from urban workers and an innkeeper from the Black Forest to middle-class doctors and lawyers, old sceptics"
~The Times Literary Supplement