The People's Dictatorship
A History of Nazi Germany

An up-to-date, succinct and highly readable survey of a compelling subject, making accessible classic and recent research on Nazi Germany.

Alan E. Steinweis (Author)

9781107652842, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 January 2023

240 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.49 kg

'Many Germans persuaded themselves they were building a “people's community”; instead, they enabled a dictatorship. Alan Steinweis explores how the Nazi elite achieved this but also deftly incorporates recent insights from social and cultural history to show both approval and rejection of Nazi policy among the population at large.' Geoffrey J. Giles, University of Florida

In this up-to-date, succinct, and highly readable volume, Alan E. Steinweis presents a new synthesis of the origins, development, and downfall of Nazi Germany. After tracing the intellectual and cultural origins of Nazi ideology, the book recounts the rise and eventual victory of the Nazi movement against the background of the struggling Weimar Republic. The book details the rapid transformation of Germany into a dictatorship, focusing on the interplay of Nazi violence and the readiness of Germans to accommodate themselves to the new regime.  Steinweis chronicles Nazi efforts to transform German society into a so-called People's Community, imbued with hyper-nationalism, an authoritarian spirit, Nazi racial doctrine, and antisemitism. The result was less a People's Community than what Steinweis calls a People's Dictatorship – a repressive regime that acted brutally toward the targets of its persecution, its internal opponents, and its foreign enemies even as it enjoyed support across much of German society.

1. The Idea of Nazism
2. The Triumph of Nazism
3. The Nazi Dictatorship
4. The Nazi Economy, 1933–1939
5. Nazi Society, 1933–1939
6. Policing the Boundaries of the 'People's Community'
7. A New Order in Europe
8. The Nazi Empire
9. The War of Annihilation
10. The Destruction of Nazi Germany.

Subject Areas: Political structures: totalitarianism & dictatorship [JPHX], Fascism & Nazism [JPFQ], Second World War [HBWQ], Genocide & ethnic cleansing [HBTZ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]