The German middle and working class sowed the seeds of the Nazis rise to power in the nineteenth century. They took root at the outbreak of the Great War in July 1914. And they bloomed with the Nazi’s rise to power from 1930.

Historians and other writers say there were three reasons the Nazis came to power. Germany lost the Great War. The Allies forced the country to pay repressive reparations and the Great Depression. Fritzsche says they were factors but not the main reasons. He believes the Nazis provided a vehicle for the working and middle class to express their nationalism and demand a less rigid society.

When the German government declared war in August 1914, hundreds of thousands of people showed their support in the streets of cities and towns throughout the country. Fritzsche argues it’s a landmark in German history, as is the surrender in November 1918, the ascension of the Nazis in January 1933 and the May 1933. There’s a chapter on each in which Fritzsche builds his argument.

Nazi policies didn’t differ to other far right parties. The quest for national unity, national pride and a new society set the party apart from others.

The Nazis converted discontent into votes. Working class and middle class disatsifaction and expressed demands for change through two big and vocal organisations, the Landvolk and the Stahlhelm. These two groups arranged mass protests in the nineteen twenties, long before the Nazi’s ascendancy began at the 1930 elections. The Landvolk represented agricultural interests, and returning soldiers founded the Stahlhelm, an extremist and nationalist paramilitary organisation, in December 1918.

Fritzsche says these and other organisations provided the structure for working and middle class Germans to voice their rejection of the past and a yearning for a new future.

The seeds had long been there, organisations such as the Landvolk and the Stahlhelm watered them and the Nazis made them bloom.
Germany’s Great War defeat and the Great Depression contributed to the Nazi’s rise, but they weren’t the main reasons.

This well-written and accessible book provides a convincing argument. It is also an enlightening introduction to the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism.
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¿Cómo lograron los nazis, en pocos años, el apoyo masivo de la población alemana? Para Peter Fritzsche no se trató de un accidente ni fue una derivación desdichada del desastre económico o la crisis política. Tampoco la consecuencia de la hostilidad de Hitler hacia los judíos. No fueron el odio y el miedo, sino la esperanza y el optimismo, a los que los nazis apelaron de manera original y eficaz, afirmados en una corriente de entusiasmo patriótico, voluntad de participación y sacrificio nacida al comienzo de la Primera Guerra Mundial y reforzada en 1918, cuando la República de Weimar sucedió al Imperio. En ese itinerario, concluido en 1933 con la reformulación de las promesas de 1914, se perfilan los motivos por los que los nazis fueron tan populares en Alemania y se transformaron en una alternativa política aceptable para los habitantes de un país democrático.