Germany's Eastern Neighbours: Problems Relating to the Oder-Neisse Line and the Czech Frontier Regions

Abstract

The second section of the volume describes the foundations of National Socialism and the period of the Third Reich. Once again the author deals with the somewhat familiar material from a topical point of view: the ideological basis and the development of the Nazi movement, Hitler's accession to power and the organization of the totalitarian state, the economic and financial bases of the system, and Nazi foreign policy. Vermeil brilliantly develops his thesis that National Socialism is more closely linked to the Weimar r6gime than is generally supposed, by amply illustrating, for instance, the influential army and industrialist support given the Nazis before 1933, and the neo-imperialist, geopolitical and racial doctrines which had their antecedents in the Republican era. However, one may take exception to the statement that the rise of Nazism can also be attributed to inveterate habits and tendencies imprinted upon the national temperament over the generations (p. 266); for, did not the Weimar era, on the contrary, reveal an exceptionally diverse pluralism, and the tentative gropings for a democratic faith? But, despite certain criticisms of interpretation and emphasis, the signal contribution of Vermeil's volume is the measure of perspective gained by dealing with two consecutive historical periods which, it is claimed, telescoped into one another and led to the disaster of the Second World War.