Volume 32, Number 14 · September 26, 1985
Business as Usual
By James Joll
German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler
by Henry Ashby Turner Jr.
Oxford University Press, 504 pp., $25.60
The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis
by David Abraham
Princeton University Press, 366 pp., $36.00
Any explanation of the rise of National Socialism and Hitler's success is bound to have strong moral implications. The crimes of the Third Reich—war, persecution, genocide—were so great, but at the same time the similarities between Germany and other Western industrial societies are so close, that any discussion of the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship raises the anxious question: could it happen here? Is our society, which shares so much of Germany's cultural and intellectual heritage as well as having many common economic and social features with Germany, equally vulnerable to nihilism?
Review, 4792 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |