Attraktion der NS-Bewegung

Abstract

The history of the rise of Nazism is usually written against the backdrop of the Weimar Republic’s decline. The economic depression, beginning in 1929, and an alleged ‘democracy without democrats’ seemed to pave the way for what eventually led to Hitler being appointed Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933. While such factors surely were important, the positive vibrancies of Nazism among the German electorate—which were immanent to a partly affirmative ideology (and not only one consisting of antitheses)—have rather been obfuscated by the dominant narrative of an everlasting crisis. A new collected volume edited by Gudrun Brockhaus arising from a conference held at the Evangelische Akademie Tutzing in February 2013 tackles the Nazi movement from another perspective. What were positive factors contributing to the rise of Nazism? What would Nazism offer that no other party or movement notably could? In which ways did the Nazis succeed by offering answers to compensate for the psychological (and very real) trauma that was World War I? The new book builds on Brockhaus’s pioneering 1997 study Schauder und Idylle: Faschismus als Erlebnisangebot and puts some of her assumptions to a practical test. The volume is marked by an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together historians and psychologists from both a socio-psychological and a psychoanalytical perspective.