Paul Madden Ordre des livres

The social characteristics of the membership of the Nazi Party have been much debated since the late 1920s. The dominant hypothesis which emerged at the time and which became orthodoxy after 1945 was that the Nazis drew their membership and electoral support almost exclusively from the middle class ( Mittelstand ), a hypothesis based on virtually no empirical evidence. The research undertaken by the authors since the 1970s at the macro and micro level has been instrumental not only in placing the debate on the sociography of the membership of the Nazi Party on an extensive empirical footing, but also in overturning the received wisdom that the Nazi Party was a pre-eminently middle-class or lower-middle-class movement. The book contains amended versions of a number of pioneering articles on the social contours of the membership of the Nazi Party published by the authors in the 1980s, added to which are new studies examining the social background of members of the Nazi Party recruited in a rural region, in a famous university town, and in one of Germany’s most prominent cities. Collectively the studies presented here underline the diversity of the social types which were mobilised by the Nazi Party, which was successful in attracting support from all sections of German society before 1933, making it a people’s party ( Volkspartei ) transcending the class divide, not a class or lower-middle-class affair.

Although bibliographies do exist that concern themselves with the Nazi period in Germany and the Third Reich, no one has yet attempted a complete reference source. With the publication of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Epoch there is finally, a complete, comprehensive reference source designed to identify all English-language works that relate to the Nazis and the Third Reich. Included in this bibliography are monographs, biographies, pamphlets, and journal articles, as well as more general histories of the time period.The material is subdivided by subject and organized into eighteen chapters, making this large bibliography simple to use. The chapter subjects contain a broad range of data. Included are chapters on Adolf Hitler himself, the origins of national socialism, religion and the Nazis, articles about education and academics in Germany, law and government under the Third Reich, the SS and concentration camps, everyday life in Nazi Germany, foreign policy and more. The range of data collected in this one reference location is astounding, and should provide a nearly inexhaustible starting point for those scholars and students interested in the history of one of the most controversial political parties and governments of the twentieth century.