Richard Bessel

The Nazi capture of power

The capture of power by Hitler and the nazi movement in 1933 was one of the great turning-points in modern history. Yet its significance is usually seen to rest less upon what occurred in 1933 than upon what happened later. This article is an attempt to integrate the history of the nazi capture of power into what followed from it by examining four themes: war, racism, violence and order. Each of these themes was central to what happened in 1933. The first world war cast a long shadow over the politics of Weimar Germany, and this helped to create a climate conducive to nazism; racism inspired nazi activists and acceptance of racist assumptions was generally widespread; violence, both in word and deed, characterized nazi politics and helped the nazis to consolidate power rapidly in 1933; and a (misplaced) desire for order drove many Germans — among both the èlites and voters — into the arms of the nazis. Thus these broad themes, which frame the history of the Third Reich generally, also frame the history of the nazi capture of power.

Life in the Third Reich

This collection of short articles, originally published in History Today , present some new approaches to the study of Nazi Germany. The subjects include: the role of political violence in bringing the Nazis to power; the nature of the Nazi State; and Nazi policy against the Jews. This book is intended for students of modern and social history; students and general readers interested in the Second World War and its effects upon the German nation.

Hatred after War: Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany

The massive eruption of deadly violence around the world during the 1940s left as many as 100 million people dead and many more wounded and scarred for life. This was probably the greatest eruption of violence the world has yet seen, and left in its wake difficult and far-reaching legacy--of loss, of mourning,of disorientation, of bitterness and of hatred. Bessel attempts to suggest that examining hatred after war, and viewing public and political behavior as an expression of that hatred, may offer insights into what occured in both the public and the private spheres in post-1945 East Germany.

Introduction: War, Empire and Slavery, 1770–1830

For historians, the six decades spanning the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century seem pivotal to the emergence of modernity. For Eric Hobsbawm, they formed an ‘age of revolution’; for Christopher Bayly, they witnessed a ‘world crisis’ and a series of ‘converging revolutions’; Reinhart Koselleck has described them as a ‘Sattelzeit (saddle period) during which modern ways of thinking took shape against a backdrop of accelerated political, economic and social transformation.1 These dramatic changes, including the emergence of new forms of statehood and of nationalism, and major shifts in global power relations, were partly forged in the crucible of imperial wars fought around the globe by European powers: principally France, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. The Seven Years War might claim the distinction of being the first worldwide war. But the American War of Independence, in which the same European rivals were engaged, established an independent nation and a durable model of citizenship. As Jurgen Osterhammel observes in his recent panoramic history of the global nineteenth century, ‘the great conflict between the empires in the years between 1793 and 1815 did not remain limited to Europe. It was fought out on four continents: a true world war.’2 The military and political conflicts between France, Britain and their allies from 1793 to 1815 were larger and more diffuse than earlier wars, and were truly far-reaching in their effects and legacies.3