Der Schuh im Nationalsozialismus: Eine Produktgeschichte im deutsch-britisch-amerikanischen Vergleich by Anne Sudrow (review)

Abstract

In this book, her revised dissertation, Anne Sudrow looks at the history of National Socialism and its impact on German society from a new perspective: the history of material culture. She focuses on one artifact, the shoe, as a particularly interesting object in this period, being a consumer as well as a military good. In this work of history of technology, as well as political, economic, and social history, she describes and analyzes the whole product line of the shoe, from raw materials to the consumers, thus the very different perspectives of production and consumption. And in order to better reflect on possible German peculiarities and/or general developments, she then compares the German with the British and the American experience. This ambitious project takes about 800 dense pages of text.