The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure And Consequences of National Socialism

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In Die Deutsche Diktatur (1969), Bracher offered one of the first German-language interpretations placing Hitler’s anti-Semitism and racism at the center of the Nazi policies leading to dictatorship, war, and the Holocaust. Yet as historians divided into camps focused on either right-wing or left-wing forms of totalitarianism, Bracher remained the quintessential liberal, directing his gaze at the threats to democracy from both directions. Germany’s intellectual and public life had numerous articulate and impassioned advocates for liberal democracy, but Bracher was noteworthy for his focus on “the double threat” of totalitarianism of both the Nazi and Communist variants. The team of funeral directors and arrangers at our Sherborne funeral home will provide support throughout, offering guidance and comfort; helping to ease some of the emotional strain you may presently be under. turn against the "old-liberal" totalitarianism theory and talk about a relativizing interpretation, which emphasizes the "improvisational" politics of power and domination of National Socialism. Leftish interpretations would like to leave behind the questions of guilt and responsibility in favor of a more modern, realistic analysis. But in doing this they slide into the danger of a newer underestimation and trivialization of National Socialism itself. Their analysis also brings with it, in another way, the vague leftist talk about fascism and reaction" [25] Whatever type of funeral you choose, whether it is religious or non-religious, traditional or contemporary, we can both organise it and tailor the service to your own preferences, ensuring it is a personal occasion truly reflective of your loved one’s life.

Looking at present-day Germany, Bracher notes that many of the conditions that prompted the rise of the Nazi movement still exist—“the social and ideological feelings of imminent crisis, antidemocratic and völkisch-nationalist emotions, authoritarianism and antimodernism,” along with a refusal to accept historical experience.

Bracher often criticized the functionist-structuralist interpretation of Nazi Germany championed by such scholars such as Martin Broszat and Hans Mommsen, and decried their view of Hitler as a "weak dictator". In Bracher's view, Hitler was the "Master of the Third Reich". [32] However, though Bracher argues that Hitler was the driving force behind Nazi Germany, he was one of the first historians to argue that Nazi Germany was less well-organized than the Nazis liked to pretend. [32] In a 1956 essay, Bracher noted "the antagonism between rival agencies was resolved solely in the omnipotent key position of the Führer", which was the result of "...the complex coexistence and opposition of the power groups and from conflicting personal ties". [32] Unlike the functionists, Bracher saw this disorganization as part of a conscious “divide and rule” strategy on the part of Hitler, and argued at no point was Hitler ever driven by pressure from below or had his power limited in any way. [32] One area where Bracher is in agreement with the functionists concerns the highly ad hoc nature of decision-making in Nazi Germany. Bracher commented that the Nazi regime "remained in a state of permanent improvisation". [33] 1970s [ edit ]

The board is hugely grateful for Ed’s commitment to the RDA and will be very sorry to lose him as he is universally respected throughout the RDA community and beyond. His optimistic, inclusive and pragmatic approach will be sorely missed as he embodies the spirit of RDA – committed to making lives better and believing above all that ‘It’s what you can do that counts’.” Another book that could well serve the same purpose, though far more specialized, is Gerhard L. Weinberg’s The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany, the first of several projected volumes of what will surely be the definitive study of its subject. Professor Weinberg, who teaches history at the University of Michigan and has written extensively on Nazi Germany, has likewise produced a work of meticulous scholarship; and again like Bracher, he too sees Hitler’s domestic and foreign policies as interconnected and as functions of Nazi ideology. The complaints about democracy and liberalism that Bracher examined in The German Dictatorship find echoes in our own time. Our institutions are far more stable than those of the Weimar Republic, but the appeal of authoritarianism and conspiracy-theorizing is growing in Western politics. Therefore Bracher’s work on how democracy was destroyed in Germany in the 1930s remains uncomfortably relevant. Moreover, the era of totalitarian ideology and politics did not end with the collapse of Communism in Europe. Using Bracher’s criteria, it continues, most importantly in the Islamist movements that have fueled the terrorism of recent decades. Totalitarianism has changed both its geographical location and its cultural coordinates, but in its inhumanity and irrationality it merits comparison with its 20th-century predecessors. Here, too, Karl Bracher’s work will remain important for years to come both for historians of the Nazi and Communist dictatorships and for advocates of liberal democracy in a world that faces multiple illiberal challenges. [75] Honors [ edit ] In his first major study, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik: Eine Studie der Machtverfall in der Demokratie (The Dissolution of the Weimar Republic: A Study of the Collapse of Power in Democracy, 1955), Bracher drew attention to forceful anti­democratic currents, especially on the German Right, and the resulting political decisions that destroyed the Republic and brought Hitler into power. With Wolfgang Sauer and Gerhard Schutz, he probed those issues in more detail in a 1960 monograph, The National Socialist Seizure of Power: Studies in the Establishment of Totalitarian Domination in Germany, 1933–1934 (Westdeutscher Verlag, 1960). Bracher and his co-authors examined the Nazi abuses of the institutions of democracy to destroy democracy, the political blunders of their contemporaries that made it possible, and the actual seizure of power in the first year of the regime.Wendezeiten der Geschichte: Historisch-politische Essays, 1987–1992, 1992, translated into English Turning Points In Modern Times: Essays On German and European History, translated by Thomas Dunlap; with a foreword by Abbott Gleason, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-674-91354-X. He devoted much attention to the divisions and conflicts within Hitler’s government, yet, as he argued in “The Role of Hitler,”“it was indeed Hitler’s Weltanschauung and nothing else that mattered in the end, as is seen from the terrible consequences of his racist anti-Semitism in the planned murder of the Jews.” For Bracher, the history of National Socialism—from its beginnings in power to the Munich Agreement of 1938, the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, and initial disbelief that Hitler was serious about his threats to murder the Jews of Europe—could be written as the history of the underestimation of the causal import of its core ideas. Die Aufösung der Weimarer Republik: Eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie 1955. Kershaw, Ian The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, London: Arnold; New York: Copublished in the US by Oxford University Press, 2000 ISBN 0-340-76028-1.