Backing Hitler

Robert Gellately challenges the belief that the German people knew little about the Nazi terror, and the tendency of historians to distance ordinary Germans from its excesses. He reveals for the first time the social consensus behind the regime and the extent to which German men and women were involved in the persecution of social outsiders and 'race enemies'. - ,The Nazis never won a majority in free elections, but soon after Hitler took power most people turned away from democracy and backed the Nazi regime. Hitler won growing support even as he established the secret police (Gestapo) and concentration camps. What has been in dispute for over fifty years is what the Germans knew about these camps, and in what ways were they involved in the persecution of 'race enemies', slave workers, and social outsiders.To answer these questions, and to explore the public sides of Nazi persecution, Robert Gellately has consulted an array of primary documents. He argues that the Nazis did not cloak their radical approaches to 'law and order' in utter secrecy, but played them up in the press and loudly proclaimed the superiority of their system over all others. They publicized their views by drawing on popular images, cherished German ideals and long held phobias, and were able to win over converts to theircause. The author traces the story from 1933, and shows how war and especially the prospect of defeat radicalized Nazism. As the country spiralled toward defeat, Germans for the most part held on stubbornly. For anyone who contemplated surrender or resistance, terror became the order of theday. - ,As a whole Backing Hitler brings together in a scholarly yet readable way a number of different facets of the German domestic scene. - Journal of Jewish Studies,Fascinating study of coercion and consent. - ,Not only does [Gellately] provide an admirable synthesis of the mass of secondary literature ... that has appeared over the past decade or so, but he also contributes important new insights through his own research. It is a major contribution to the study of Nazism. - Times Literary Supplement,An intriguing and illuminating new book. - Niall Ferguson, Mail on Sunday,Just how much the ordinary German knew about the apparatus of terror and discrimination in the Hitler years is the subject of Robert Gellately's fascinating and disturbing account of the bonds that drew regime and people together after 1933. - Richard Overy, The Sunday Telegraph,In 1933 Germans hankered for a return to traditional values of order, family, discipline, work. Noone could forsee how such ordinary aspirations would eventuate in that most extreme act, genocide. But this is one lesson the Nazis teach us and, thanks to Robert Gellately's fine book, it is available for all to learn. - David Cesarani, The Independent,Well-written and scholarly ... fascinating but amazingly neglected subject ... this book deserves a wide readership. - History Today