The Coming of the Third Reich (117 page)

25. The first concentration camps, 1933: Social Democrats are registered on their arrival at the Oranienburg camp.

26. ‘The noble Communist in the concentration camp’. Nazi propaganda gave wide publicity to the camps but tried to give them a positive image. According to this cartoon from 14 May 1933, ‘arrest’ was followed by a ‘clean-up’, a ‘cut (hair and beard)’ - the German word is the same as that for circumcision - an ‘airing’ and a ‘photograph’. In Berlin’s ‘Romanesque Café’ and the ‘Café Megalomania’, well-known haunts of modernist artists and radical writers, the supposedly Jewish regulars lament their friend’s transformation six weeks later: ‘What the poor man must have gone through!’

27. Hitler’s cultural revolution: out of a mass of squabbling pygmies, ‘Germany’s sculptor’ creates a new giant German ready to take on the world.

28. The exiles: the Nazi satirical journal
The Nettle
portrays the flight of Germany’s most eminent writers and intellectuals as a triumph for the German nation: while Thomas Mann works the hurdy-gurdy, others, mostly Jewish, slink away from Germany to his tune. Among those caricatured are Albert Einstein, Lion Feuchtwanger and Karl Marx. ‘What is gone, won’t return.’

29. ‘Against the un-German spirit’: Nazi students burn Jewish and leftist books outside Berlin University on 10 May 1933.

30. ‘Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!’ Stormtroopers paste stickers onto a Jewish shop window during the boycott of I April 1933, while shoppers look on.

31. Continuity in the National Socialist Revolution: a postcard from 1933 draws a direct line from Frederick the Great of Prussia through Bismarck to Hitler.

Table of Contents

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright Page

Dedication

Preface

Part 1 - THE LEGACY OF THE PAST

GERMAN PECULIARITIES

GOSPELS OF HATE

THE SPIRIT OF 1914

DESCENT INTO CHAOS

Part 2 - THE FAILURE OF DEMOCRACY

THE WEAKNESSES OF WEIMAR

THE GREAT INFLATION

CULTURE WARS

THE FIT AND THE UNFIT

Part 3 - THE RISE OF NAZISM

BOHEMIAN REVOLUTIONARIES

THE BEER-HALL PUTSCH

REBUILDING THE MOVEMENT

THE ROOTS OF COMMITMENT

Part 4 - TOWARDS THE SEIZURE OF POWER

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY

THE VICTORY OF VIOLENCE

FATEFUL DECISIONS

Part 5 - CREATING THE THIRD REICH

THE TERROR BEGINS

FIRE IN THE REICHSTAG

DEMOCRACY DESTROYED

BRINGING GERMANY INTO LINE

Part 6 - HITLER’S CULTURAL REVOLUTION

DISCORDANT NOTES

THE PURGE OF THE ARTS

‘AGAINST THE UN-GERMAN SPIRIT’

A ‘REVOLUTION OF DESTRUCTION’?

Notes

Bibliography

Index