Hitler's True Believers

Description

Nazi ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and culminated in the Second World War and the Holocaust. In this book, Gellately addresses often-debated questions about how the Führer discovered the ideology and why millions adopted aspects of National Socialism without having laid eyes on the "leader" or reading his work.

• Rather than dismissing socialism as a disingenuous label Hitler had supposedly chosen for tactical gain, the book argues that we must take the nationalism and socialism seriously
• Based on a wealth of archival documents, primary materials, and secondary sources, the book is formidable in its scope and mastery of the material
• Poses daring new questions on how Germans reacted to Nazi ideology and what the regime had to offer them

About the Author(s)

Robert Gellately, Professor, Florida State University

Robert Gellately is the Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University. He is the author of Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers and German Politics, and Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: How Hitler Found National Socialist Ideas
Chapter 2: Early Leaders' Paths to National Socialism
Chapter 3: The National Socialist "Left"
Chapter 4: The Militants
Chapter 5: The Nazi Voters
Chapter 6: National Socialism Gains Power
Chapter 7: Embracing the Volksgemeinschaft
Chapter 8: Striving for Unanimity
Chapter 9: Quest for a Cultural Revolution
Chapter 10: The Racist Ideology
Chapter 11: Nationalism and Militarism
Chapter 12: War and Genocide
Conclusion

Reviews

"This sweeping account draws on career-long research by one of the foremost scholars of Nazism today. Hitler's True Believers gets at the core of a perennial question: why did people choose to follow Hitler? Rather than focusing on the leader himself, Gellately delves deeply into an ideology defined by nationalism, socialism, and antisemitism. Nazi socialism must be taken especially seriously, he argues, and he shows that Germans often shared the party's ideas before they joined it, just as the party drew on popular impulses. To learn how the Nazis obtained and maintained the support of millions of Germans, this outstanding book will be essential reading for many years to come." - Julia Torrie, Professor of History, St. Thomas University

"A remarkable read. Gellately argues with conviction that if we want to fully understand why millions of ordinary Germans became 'true believers' in Nazism, then we need to look beyond Hitler's 'charisma' and take seriously the presence of National Socialist dreams and desires in the plural." - Matthew Stibbe, Professor of Modern European History, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

"Robert Gellately's Hitler's True Believers provides a powerful rebuttal of the tendency to present National Socialism as 'nonsensical and irrational.' Its arguments - that Hitler was a man of ideas and that we cannot understand Nazi Germany's considerable staying powers unless we take the regime's socialist attitudes and expectations seriously - are as provocative as they are persuasive. Gellately's book is the most important and original book on the history of the Third Reich published in a generation." - Thomas Weber , author of Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi

"It's tempting to draw parallels between the Hitler era and the present age of ascendant nationalism, and Gellately offers reasons to do so...A thoughtful, timely study of how Nazism moved from the political fringe to the heart of German life." - Kirkus

"As with his earlier book, Backing Hitler, Gellately substantively revises our understanding of the process whereby average Germans became active participants or indifferent bystanders to Nazi atrocities. This work, an impressive synthesis of scholarship and archival sources, will be beneficial for all libraries." - Frederic Krome, Library Journal

"Gellately's study is a thorough treatment of an intellectually and emotionally difficult subject, as well as a sobering reminder of people's willingness to forget that their fellow human beings are, in fact, human. Hitler's True Believers sheds light on one of the twentieth century's most puzzling yet crucial questions." - Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews

"“In the scholarly-and more comprehensive-Hitler's True Believers, Robert Gellately, a distinguished historian of 20th-century totalitarianism, travels the whole length of the National Socialist arc-from grubby origins to miserable conclusion-in his attempt to explain how “ordinary people became Nazis.” Mr. Gellately differs from many in the weight he places on the appeal of the “socialist” element in an ideology that, almost from its earliest days, had combined nationalism and anti-Semitism with a distrust of capitalism." - Andrew Stuttaford, The Wall Street Journal