William Sheridan Allen - The Nazi Seizure of Power

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Brattleboro, Vermont

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Copyright 1965, 1984, 2014 William Sheridan Allen

ISBN: 978-1-62654-872-5

Cover image: Nrnberg, Reichsparteitag by Scherl

Courtesy of the German Federal Archive

Cover design by Adrienne Nez,

Echo Point Books & Media

Editorial and proofreading assistance by Christine Schultz,

Echo Point Books & Media

Printed and bound in the United States of America

CHAPTER 1
The Setting

CHAPTER 2
The Anatomy of the Town

CHAPTER 3
Enter the Nazis

CHAPTER 4
Exploiting Victory

CHAPTER 5
Authoritarians Unite

CHAPTER 6
The Depths of the Depression

CHAPTER 7
Political Crescendo

CHAPTER 8
Things Fall Apart

CHAPTER 9
The Last Winter

CHAPTER 10
The Last Elections

CHAPTER 11
The Uses of Electoral Success

CHAPTER 12
The Terror System

CHAPTER 13
Whipping Up Enthusiasm

CHAPTER 14
The Atomization of Society

CHAPTER 15
The Positive Aspect

CHAPTER 16
Reaction and Resistance

CHAPTER 17
From Enthusiasm to Ritual

CHAPTER 18
The Great Justification

CHAPTER 19
Life in the Third Reich

CHAPTER 20
Conclusions

APPENDIX A
A Descriptive List of Individuals Interviewed for This Book

APPENDIX B
Tables

APPENDIX C
The Northeim NSDAP

TO MY MOTHER

and to the memory of my father, who taught me love of learning

(both halting before the actual seizure of power), but before I undertook this present study there was nothing written to cover the entire period of the Nazi Revolution or that focused on a limited locality.

Yet Nazi measures on the local level were a key to the establishment of the Third Reich in Germany. Before Hitler came to power he gained great support through the virtuosity and adaptability of his local party organizations. The actual seizure of power in the spring of 1933 occurred largely from below, though it was facilitated and made possible by Hitlers position as Chancellor of Germany. The Fuehrer reached the pinnacle of power because his followers were successful at the lowest level, at the base.

A single unit can never adequately reflect the whole. The subject of this book was not, in many ways, an average German town. It was heavily middle class; it was more closely tied to the countryside and less to industry than most German towns; it was overwhelmingly Lutheran; it turned to Nazism earlier and more strongly than most of the rest of Germany. Yet it does show representative characteristics: in the activism of the Nazi party, in the sociological strengths and weaknesses of the Social Democrats, in the attitudes of the nationalistic middle class, in voting trends, in the growth of political activity and partisan violence, and perhaps in other ways that will become apparent only when other towns are studied in similar detail. In this sense it is not a true microcosm, though it can be instructive of broader trends. I offer it as at least one concrete example of what the Nazi Revolution meant in all its varied aspects in one confined area.

If a microcosm has the drawback of being nonrepresentative, it has the advantage of permitting a close and detailed study. The smaller number of actors makes it possible for the historian to come near to knowing them all. Variables are limited and there is a comprehensible and relatively constant background. Immediacy and reality are enhanced. One can fit actions into the pattern of daily life and thus determine why individuals acted as they did, why Germans made the kind of choices that let Hitler into power. It was this possibility, more than anything else, that led me to research into the fate of a town which would otherwise not deserve even a footnote in a general study of the rise of Nazism.

The ravages of revolution, terror, war, and occupation severely limited the number and type of source materials available for this study. Thanks to the cooperation of the townspeople, however, most of the public and private documents that survived were put at my disposal. Enough of the people of the town agreed to be interviewed

When the idea for this study first came to me, I was given essential encouragement by Dr. Harry Marks of the University of Connecticut, for which I thank him. The research was made possible by a grant from the Federal Republic of Germany. Dr. Heinrich Eggeling gave me valuable advice and practical aid, while Dr. Karl Roskamp provided me with the benefit of his experience in the labyrinth of German tax statistics. Various revisions were suggested by my two excellent teachers at the University of Minnesota, Professor Harold Deutsch and Professor William Wright, by my two kind colleagues at the University of Missouri, Professor David Pinkney and Professor Roderick McGrew, by Professor Gerhard L. Weinberg, and by Professor Raul Hilberg. My wife, Luella S. Allen, lent a critical ear and much moral support. While I acknowledge their separate kindnesses gratefully and affirm the collective nature of whatever insights this work may possess, the actual formulation and therefore the responsibility for any defects rests with myself alone.

Small towns the world over have two aspects in common: little privacy and much gossip. Before I ever began my research I came to the conclusion that not only should the names of informants and other principal characters be kept secret but the actual name of the town would have to be disguised. Consequently anyone who looks on a map or in an encyclopedia for Thalburg will not find it. This precaution was also part of a promise which I made to the city fathers and to all those interviewed. Scholars who want to pursue the matter will find the identity of the town plus a list and identification of sources on file at the History Department of the University of Minnesota.

There is a descriptive list of persons interviewed appended for reference. In addition, each person interviewed will be described in a note on the page where he first appears. No person from Thalburg mentioned in this study has been given his true name. Inventing so many names taxes the imagination; should any reader find his name in these pages I hope he will understand that it is pure coincidence.

W.S.A.

Columbia, Missouri

1965

Ernest-August Roloff, Brgertum und Nationalsozialismus: Braunschweigs Weg ins Dritten Reich (Hannover, 1960): Rudolf Heberle, From Democracy to Nazism (Baton Rouge, 1945).

Available from University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan, No. 631188.