The Coming of the Third Reich

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author	RIchard J. Evans
summary	The first in his Third Reich Trilogy and likely to be the one I find most useful today. I'd like to take particular care to compare it against The Death of Democracy.
status	reading

this book will cover the 18th-century Bismarckian Empire through the Nazi rise to power; it is interested in how they established their single-party system with seemingly little resistance from the German people
aimed primarily at general audiences, not so much specialists; such broad histories are comparatively rare
Shrier's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, while immensely popular with the general public, has been panned by academics for poorly documenting the conditions leading to the Third Reich; even in its own time, it was considered out of touch with scholarship on the subject
Bracher's The German Dictatorship covers the fall of the Weimar Republic in depth and the resulting Reich's foreign policy and culture in somewhat less depth; while it covers the ground left vague by Shrier, it is extremely academic, putting it out of reach of the casual reader
Kershaw's Hitler duology, though it bridges the latter two in terms of style and audience, is much narrower in scope than either
Burleigh's The Third Reich: A New History emphasizes the violence at the heart of the Nazi worldview (whereas most academic works tend to abstract it away), but its focus on making moral judgments renders it unable to engage seriously with that ideology
Evans aims to combine these various approaches while reintroducing the voices of those who lived through these times into the narrative; in doing so, he hopes to convey to the reader that these developments were not inevitable
- I think this is an important point: if we accept, as Shrier (allegedly) does, that the rise of Nazi Germany was inevitable, then we will ourselves become unable to meaningfully discuss and halt nascent fascist movements
quoting Ian Kershaw: “For an outsider, a non-German who never experienced Nazism, it is perhaps too easy to criticise, to expect standards of behaviour which it was well-nigh impossible to attain in the circumstances.”

Friedrich Meinecke put forth the first real attempt (immediately after the war) to place the Third Reich in historical context; he argued that Germany had an obsession with world power beginning with Bismark and intensifying during WWI
he believed that militaristic industrial advancements had replaced cultural and moral instruction
Meinecke was honest enough to admit that he and his peers (the educated upper-middle class) had found something in Hitler's work that met the needs of the day
his ultimate conclusion was that the German nation-state had been uniquely flawed from its conception; he overfocused on the power politics and barely considered what he called the Nazis' “racial madness”
moreover, several brutal dictatorships had formed across Europe in the early 20th century; cultural and economic achievements did not immunize a nation against political barbarism
- look into: Dark Continent: Europe's 20th century
some have since argued that Germany's economic and cultural achievements were in fact key to the Nazis' triumph
Marxists have often claimed that the class conflict brought about by Germany's extensive capitalism had reached a breaking point, leading the capital holders to astroturf the Nazi Party into power
- look into: fn 21, 22
such a view is overly reductive, Evans argues, because it ignores the Nazi racial doctrines, the many capitalists trampled by the Nazis, and the fact that many Jews contributed substantially to Germany's capitalism; furthermore, why did Nazism fail to take root within other highly capitalist nations?
- I mostly agree, though I find his line about Jews' economic contributions flaccid, much like the “I have a black friend” defense; capitalism is uninterested in those crushed under its boots so long as line go up [sic], and fascism's whole shtick is successively narrowing the definition of “us” and expanding that of “them”
many non-Germans were concerned with this latter question, often concluding that Germans were somehow anti-democratic in nature; the Nazis themselves had similarly believed that the German character was naturally undemocratic and racially superior but had been separated from those values by the French Revolution
both are wrong, as the 1848 Revolution demonstrates; besides, this explanation, if true, would beg the question as to why such an authoritarian takeover hadn't happened sooner than 1933
me importantly, such an explanation makes the Nazi rise seem inevitable, when it was anything but; there was strong internal opposition to the Nazis, but it was overcome
another argument is that the German has no interest in politics, an idea that originated as an alibi for the German middle class; but 1930s Germany did not lack political commitment and belief
German historians objected to such sweeping generalizations of their nation's character, instead pointing to larger authoritarian currents in Europe as a whole (e.g. Italy, Russia)
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with the collapse of European imperial states after WWI and subsequent introduction of the masses to politics, the new nation-states quickly succumbed to totalitarianism at the hands of agitators
there is validity to the comparison between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (and it certainly benefited Western Cold War participants), but the two were formed under such vastly different circumstances that it's a better description than explanation
all of this is to say that Nazism is as generally European as it is uniquely German in its origin; our explanation will therefore begin where Meinecke's did in 1946: the formation of the German state under Bismarck in 1871
Evans doesn't claim to have a single answer, readily admitting that there are multiple complex answers

this series follows the three major arcs in scholarly study of Nazi Germany: the downfall of the Weimar Republic (40s–60s), the Nazi regime through the buildup to WWII (70s–80s), and the years of the war itself, with special attention to the Nazi persecution of Jews, homosexuals, the handicapped, “asocials”, etc. (90s–present)
“Few countries could have been more generous or more open to outsiders wishing to study their problematic and uncomfortable past.”
- yes, we could learn a thing or two from this
Evans notes that he was involved in Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd as an expert witness, so that's something to look into maybe (along with the context and writings)
for this audience, Evans has opted to translate all German words into English equivalents except for Reich, Reichstag, and Kaiser; this is to remove some of the ideological baggage from terms like Führer and Mein Kampf, as well as to disambiguate those like Volk and national
there will also be Nazi terminology used throughout without disapproving epithets or scare quotes; this is obviously not to imply approval but is instead to preserve readability and reflect the terms' usage at that time

Otto von Bismarck was as mixed a character as the forces leading to the Nazi rise to power, and so is a fitting point to begin discussions of the latter
only fifty years lay between Bismark's founding of the German Empire in 1871 and the electoral victories of the Nazis in 1930–32
- let that sink in; fifty years is the interval from the Korean War to the War on Terror
Bismarck was known as the wild man of German conservatism; of aristocratic origin (and highly Prussian), he despised liberalism, socialism, parliamentarism, and egalitarianism
- as a British author, it would seem that Evans uses “liberalism” in its original meaning rather than the way an American might use it
somehow that disdain for equality did not harm his reputation; he was even inspirational to liberals during and after WWI, a time when Germans acutely felt the absence of such a strong leader
contrary to later legends, however, Bismark was a political pragmatist rather than a reckless gambler
in the millennium preceding him, Central Europe consisted of various autonomous states (sometimes just castles on modest estates), all collected under the banner of the Holy Roman Reich of the German Nation
founded by Charlemagne in 800 and dissolved by Napoleon in 1806, this was the “thousand-year Reich” the Nazis aspired to re-create
by Napoleon's arrival, the Reich was already falling apart; there was no meaningful central authority, and some member states like Austria and Prussia behaved as though the Reich did not exist
with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Reich was succeeded by the German Confederation with roughly the same borders, including the German and Czech-speaking parts of Austria; Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich established a police system across the region that successfully held back liberal revolutionary sentiment
in the 1840s, a new generation of liberal thinkers sought to quash the many tyrannies plaguing Germany by doing away with the member states and establishing a single German polity built upon fundamental rights and freedoms; when revolution sparked in Paris in 1848 and spread across Europe, they tried exactly that
the liberal revolutionaries quickly organized elections in the Confederation (including Austria) and assembled a national parliament in Frankfurt, where they voted through a German constitution along classic liberal lines
unfortunately, they could not gain control over the armies of Austria and Prussia, the two leading member states; once their monarchs and generals regrouped in autumn of 1848, they managed to forcibly dissolve the Frankfurt Parliament by the next spring, ending the revolution and re-establishing the Confederation
this was not, as some have framed it, a hard turn into unavoidable aggressive nationalist dictatorship; trial by jury in open court, equality before the law, freedom of business enterprise, abolition of the most objectionable forms of state censorship, the right of assembly, and so on were in place through nearly all of Germany by the 1860s
several states had even instituted representative assemblies with some control over legislation and state taxes, though the concessions stopped short of national unification or full parliamentary sovereignty
in 1862 the liberal assembly in Prussia blocked taxes until the army was brought under legislative control
this seriously threatened Prussian military funding, so the Prussian king appointed Otto von Bismarck to handle the crisis
the liberals had by this time realized there could be no German unification involving Austria, which would have required the breakup of the Habsburg monarchy, but they believed Germany was still ripe for unification given Italy's a few years prior
Bismarck, like other European leaders of his time, was willing to use revolutionary or even radical means to achieve fundamentally conservative ends
after their frustration in 1848, he realized many liberals would sacrifice some of their liberal principles in exchange for national unity
Bismarck allied with the Austrians to seize the disputed Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark, then engineered a war between Austria and Prussia over their administration, which the Prussians handily won; the German Confederation collapsed, and Bismarck established the North German Confederation (without Austria and its south German allies)
with a nation-state imminent, the Prussian liberals immediately forgave Bismarck for his (openly anti-parliamentary) policy of raising taxes and funding the army without parliamentary approval; they then cheered on as he started a war with France, who feared the implications of a united Germany on their own position within European politics
following the French defeat, the new German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles
though a fulfillment of the liberals' desire for a unified nation-state, there were consequences for the future, not least of which the name of this entity
the name conjured up memories of the thousand-year Holy Roman Reich, and some even called it the “Second Reich”; it was not coincidence that this one was proclaimed at Versailles when the last was destroyed by French aggression
the Weimar Republic even continued to use the term German Reich, despite the latter's end in 1918
and of course, the Nazis would later declare “one People, one Reich, one Leader”, referencing the desire to unite all German speakers throughout Europe
in this Reich's early days, there were already those who felt it was only a partial realization of a real German Reich
Bismarck's constitution was hardly a victory for the liberals of 1848; it stands as the only modern German constitution to lack a declaration of human rights and civic freedoms
the new Reich was, much like its predecessor, formally a loose confederation of independent states; it was headed by the Kaiser (from the Holy Roman Reich and Latin Caesar) who had wide-ranging powers including those of war and peace; it also featured a nationally elected parliament, the Reichstag (another name derived from the Holy Roman Reich that would carry into Weimar) and several administrative institutions
however, the constitution did not grant the Reichstag the power to elect or dismiss governments and their ministers, declare war or peace, or administer the army
government ministers (such as the Reich Chancellor) were civil servants, not party politicians, and they were beholden to the Kaiser rather than the people or their representatives
quoting Karl Marx: “[the Bismarckian Reich was] a bureaucratically constructed military despotism, dressed up with parliamentary forms, mixed in with an element of feudalism yet at the same time already influenced by the bourgeoisie.”

Prussia's military might followed from a long historical tradition; the Prussian state had since the 17th century been organized along military lines
Bismarck's appointment in 1862 was precisely to protect the military's autonomy from liberal interference
the wars of 1866 and 1870–71 trampled established institutions, overthrew longstanding traditions, and redrew state boundaries; the resulting Reich was thus built upon state military power exercised to a degree uncommon in that period
the army at this time was effectively a state within a state, accountable only to the Kaiser; officers received many privileges and expected deference from civilians, whose compulsory military service primed them with military standards of behavior
those who stayed with the military for a period after their compulsory service ended were guaranteed the rights to state jobs upon leaving the army, so the majority of lower-level civil service jobs (postal workers, police, railway workers, etc) were filled by ex-soldiers
over time the officer corps and the aristocracy grew more separate, but this did not make the army more democratic
in 1904–7, the German army massacred thousands of Herero people in modern-day Namibia, taking the population from 80000 to 15000 by 1911
in occupied areas of the empire, the army frequently acted like conquerors facing a hostile population
the more flagrant examples of such led the Reichstag to pass a vote of no confidence in the government in 1913; while a toothless action, it highlights how polarized views of the army's societal role had become
Bismarck did manage to restrain the army's drive for continued territorial expansion during his time as Chancellor; this was in contrast to the legend of him as the man who effortlessly solved political problems with force and blood
that image was a construct of later times, fueled particularly by the public memory of his revolutionary wars and his ruthless pursuit of those he considered enemies of the Reich
in the 1870s, Bismarck launched what the liberals called the “struggle for culture” (Kulturkampf); this was a series of laws and police actions meant to bring the Catholic Church under the control of the Prussian state
these included requiring clergy be trained in state institutions and requiring state approval for all clerical appointments
within a few years, 989 parishes were without incumbents, 225 priests had been jailed, all Catholic religious orders except those involved in nursing had been suppressed, two archbishops and three bishops had been removed from office, and the Bishop of Trier died shortly after his release from prison
despite Catholics making up roughly 40% of the population, the liberals cheered on these moves, believing Catholicism such a threat to the nation
the Catholics, now enemies of liberalism and modernity, formed the Center Party to defend themselves against this persecution; through this party, they were determined to prove their loyalty to the state
meanwhile, Bismarck was also going after the socialists, who had been (unfairly) implicated in two assassination attempts on Kaiser Wilhelm I; the boringly-named Anti-Socialist Law banned socialist meetings, publications, and the socialist party and sanctioned mass arrests and capital punishment of socialists
Germany's socialist movement at the time was very much focused on electoralism and working within the law; that very much changed over the following years
the socialists continued to be elected to the Reichstag (as individuals) and eventually formed the Social Democratic Party (SPD) when the Anti-Socialist Law lapsed in 1890; by the eve of WWI, the SPD was the largest political organization anywhere in the world
in the 1912 elections, they held the largest share of the Reichstag (despite the electoral system's bias toward conservative rural areas)
as the liberals had strongly supported the Anti-Socialist Law, the SPD were immediately distrustful of any political supporters of capitalism; their demands and discipline struck terror in to the respectable upper and middle classes, forming a political divide that would later play a role in the Nazi rise to power
that said, their real concern of a new banning order greatly softened their approach; their organizing apparatus provided a vital way of life for its members, something they were desperate to protect
still, they were regarded as dangerous revolutionaries by the police, conservative judges, and prosecutors; by 1914, nearly all SPD speakers and newspaper editor had endured several prison terms for criticizing state officials
see the last few sentences of p. 15, particularly the final one: “In their eyes, the law's purpose was to uphold the existing institutions of state and society, not to act as a neutral referee between opposing political groups.”
- is this not a typical conservative view of the law?
the liberals, meanwhile, had lost heavily in the Reichstag between the 1880s and 1890s and had even split
in 1910, there were two mainstream liberal parties: the National Liberals and the Progressives, differentiated primarily by their stance on Bismarck's actions in the 1860s (the Progressives were not cool with it)
there were also two conservative parties, both largely Protestant
and the Catholic Center Party, who were nationalist and anti-modern but also pro-welfare and critical of colonialism in Africa
the German political landscape before 1914 reflect Germany's deep social divisions (region, religion, social class)
“In a situation where there was a strong executive not directly responsible to the legislature, this weakened the prospect of party-politics being able to play a determining role in the state.”
- I thought at first that Evans was suggesting that the multi-party system was itself bad (given that he directly contrasts it with a two-party system in the preceding sentences), but that isn't the case; rather, he means that the parties were focused on fighting each other over a comparatively small slice of state power over wielding that slice to (try to) contain the independent executive

voters of the time were very politically active and confident in the electoral system, thanks to universal male suffrage, mostly secret ballots, and strict rules of electoral propriety
the 1912 Reichstag election saw turnout of 85% of eligible voters, impressive given the frequency of run-off elections
nearly every newspaper in Imperial Germany was tied to one or another of the political parties, and political alignment often governed a person's choice of leisure activities
with the turn of the 20th century, talk turned to Germany's place in Europe and the world; Bismarck's Reich was on many fronts incomplete
it held substantial cultural and ethnic minorities (Danes, French speakers, Sorbs, and lots of Poles), which the state had been aggressively working to Germanize; very few Germans believed these minorities were entitled to the same respect as the majority population
while Bismarck didn't particularly care about overseas colonies, later Chancellors saw Germany as second-class compared to globe-spanning imperial powers like Britain and France
construction began on a massive battle fleet with the intention of challenging Britain in the North Sea for territorial concessions
the loudest (and most erratic) voice in Germany's colonial push was that of Kaiser Wilhelm II
- oh balls, this guy sounds like a proto-Trump: bombastic, self-important, mercurial, and tactless, with ministers working to counter his influence; yikes
anyway, Wilhelm's demeanor made people pine more for Bismarck
nationalism, imperialism, and militarism were all the rage across Europe at this time (hey, don't those things sound familiar?), but Germany held them in a unique concentration
Imperial Germany has since been painted as socially backwards, civically deficient, and antiquated; but to its contemporaries, Germany was a wealthy, advanced industrial powerhouse
still, it faced internal tensions aplenty, particularly the stress of being dragged into modernity and rapid industrialization; these tensions would see release in increasing nationalism, racism, and antisemitism, all of which would remain alive and well into the 20th century

in 1889 Hermann Ahlwardt, caught embezzling from the school at which he was headmaster, decided to blame the Jews for his misfortunes
the German Jewish community at the time was highly acculturated; acculturation is distinct from assimilation in that the latter entails a complete loss of cultural identity, whereas the former involves the maintenance of two identities
- it's beginning to make sense to me why Jews are so often targeted; we tend to discuss the successes of, say, American Jews as Jewish stories rather than American ones
with German unification in 1871 and the replacement of religious marriages with civil ones, intermarriages between Jews and Christians began to increase rapidly; conversions to Christianity also rose; all of this is to say that the German Jewish community was no longer an enclosed religious group
still, Jews accounted for only around 1% of the population as a whole
excluded from Reich institutions such as civil service, many either emigrated from the country or concentrated into particular districts within larger cities, where they still made up only a single-digit minority percentage
German Jews often found places in business and professions, particularly banking, retail, medicine, law, journalism, and so on
like other minority ethnic groups in Germany, they formed their own representative institutions; unlike most of the other groups, they were economically successful and joined established political parties rather than forming their own
most Jews identified strongly with German nationalism and so gravitated toward the liberal parties
for the most part, they came to represent what was progressive and modern about German culture and society; that made them easy targets for those (like Ahlwardt) who felt pushed aside by the rapid modernization and industrialization taking place
only two years after its formation, the Reich began suffering from an economic depression sweeping the world at the time (which started in the US—because of course it did); Catholic and conservative journalists were quick to point fingers at Jewish financiers, a claim that was easy to swallow for those yearning for an idyllic simpler past
Adolf Stöcker founded the Christian Social Party in an attempt to win back the working class from the SPD; this party would fight elections in the 1880s on an explicitly antisemitic platform
Max Libermann von Sonnenberg helped organize a national petition in 1880 calling for the removal of Jews from public positions
Ernst Enrici was so vehement in his rhetoric that it led to riots in Neustettin and the burning of the local synagogue
Ahlwardt joined this movement in the late 1880s with a book blaming his misfortunes on the machinations of Jewish money lenders and claiming the Jews were all-powerful in German society
his “evidence” for his claims turned out to have been completely fabricated by him and landed him a four-month prison sentence
immediately upon his release, he laid out even more bonkers claims (that a Jewish arms manufacturer had intentionally supplied the army with faulty rifles to further a Franco-Jewish conspiracy to undermine the German military) and received a five-month prison sentence
this one he never served, as he had landed a seat in the Reichstag after vigorously campaigning in rural Brandenburg by scapegoating Jews (who were far-off and obscure to his constitutents)
antisemitism was clearly a successful campaign strategy among rural voters; Otto Böckel was elected in a similar manner
this was seen by a threat to the electoral hegemony of the Conservative Party, who added antisemitic points to their party program in 1893
Theodor Fritsch tried and failed to collect the strands of political antisemitism and target them to the urban lower-middle class, thanks in part to egotism of those like Böckel
- how about that, it turns out racist dickwads don't form cohesive alliances—who knew?
Fritch still published a load of popular antisemitic literature and later made it to the Reichstag as a Nazi Party member
the independent (single-issue?) antisemites were largely displaced by the early 1900s, as the mainstream parties (in this case the Conservative, Center, and Christian Social) adopted antisemitic rhetoric into their own platforms
Ahlwardt's language was violent enough to alienate even other antisemites; after spending some time in the US, he returned to Germany with a new enemy—the Freemasons (ooOOoOOooOoOOoooooh); he landed in prison again in 1909 (for blackmail) and finally died in a 1914 traffic accident

The Third Reich in Power (Evans), the second volume in the series
The Third Reich at War (Evans), the third volume in the series
The Death of Democracy (Hett), another examination of the Weimar Republic's fall

The Coming of the Third Reich

Notes

Preface

German Peculiarities

Gospels of Hate

The Spirit of 1914

Descent into Chaos

The Weaknesses of Weimar

The Great Inflation

Culture Wars

The Fit and the Unfit

Bohemian Revolutionaries

The Beer-Hall Putsch

Rebuilding the Movement

The Roots of Commitment

The Great Depression

The Crisis of Democracy

The Victory of Violence

Fateful Decisions

The Terror Begins

Fire in the Reichstag

Democracy Destroyed

Bringing Germany into Line

Discordant Notes

The Purge of the Arts

"Against the Un-German Spirit"

A Revolution of Destruction?

Thoughts

Related reading

UWiki XXX