Charles Maier

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power, a group of leading historians and political sociologists participated in a historical reassessment of the Nazi regime sponsored by the Harvard Center for European Studies. Their papers focus on recent scholarly controversies and on the questions that have preoccupied observers since the events took place: the nature of Nazi support, the role of the dictator, the function of ideology and anti-Semitism, and the goals of foreign policy. Some of the specific issues addressed include the reason for the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the social origins of Nazi Party members, the role of women under Nazism, the relationship of Nazi leaders to the older German bureaucratic framework, and the impact of Nazi policies abroad. The volume thus provides an incisive briefing on Hitler's rise to power and summarizes the major interpretations of the issues still under debate.

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of Hitler's seizure of power, a group of leading historians and political sociologists participated in a historical reassessment of the Nazi regime sponsored by the Harvard Center for European Studies. Their papers focus on recent scholarly controversies and on the questions that have preoccupied observers since the events took place: the nature of Nazi support, the role of the dictator, the function of ideology and anti-Semitism, and the goals of foreign policy. Some of the specific issues addressed include the reason for the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the social origins of Nazi Party members, the role of women under Nazism, the relationship of Nazi leaders to the older German bureaucratic framework, and the impact of Nazi policies abroad. The volume thus provides an incisive briefing on Hitler's rise to power and summarizes the major interpretations of the issues still under debate.

A classic in its field, Bread and Democracy in Germany has been widely praised since its publication in 1943 for its account of German political and economic development. In his preface, Alexander Gerschenkron states: "The primary purpose of this study is to show, first, how, before 1914, the machinery of Junker protectionism is agriculture, coupled with the Junker philosophy... delayed the development of democratic institutions in Germany; and second, how the Junkers contrived to escape almost unscathed from the German revolution of 1918 and how this fact contributed to the constitutional weakness and subsequent disintegration of the Weimar Republic." Emphasizing the importance of the problem of German agriculture in its relation to democratic reconstruction, Gerschenkron asserts that "the political attitude of farmers in several European countries had a decisive influence on the fate of European democracy. Nowhere is this more true than in Germany. The German farmers bear their full share of responsibility for the advent of fascism in that country."