Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany

Robert Gellately

Mar 2002 · OUP Oxford

About this ebook

The Nazis never won a majority in free elections, but soon after Hitler took power most people turned away from democracy and backed the Nazi regime. Hitler won growing support even as he established the secret police (Gestapo) and concentration camps. What has been in dispute for over fifty years is what the Germans knew about these camps, and in what ways were they involved in the persecution of 'race enemies', slave workers, and social outsiders. To answer these questions, and to explore the public sides of Nazi persecution, Robert Gellately has consulted an array of primary documents. He argues that the Nazis did not cloak their radical approaches to 'law and order' in utter secrecy, but played them up in the press and loudly proclaimed the superiority of their system over all others. They publicized their views by drawing on popular images, cherished German ideals, and long held phobias, and were able to win over converts to their cause. The author traces the story from 1933, and shows how war and especially the prospect of defeat radicalized Nazism. As the country spiralled toward defeat, Germans for the most part held on stubbornly. For anyone who contemplated surrender or resistance, terror became the order of the day.

Ratings and reviews

Fact or absence of facts. Typical Jewish propaganda with half truths arrenged with logical fallacies. In Germany they where never called Nazi but national socialist. Is funy Ashkenazi Jews called them Nazi after the war. As they called kind in Egypt pharons sheets Thor priest where called pharons and the lies that slaves build pyramids or the lie of exodus with zero archeological facts.

This was actually a pretty good read.

About the author

Robert Gellately is Professor in Holocaust History at Clark University, Massacuhsetts, USA.