Martina Steber is Research Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munichpreviously she was based at the German Historical Institute London. Her first book Ethnische Gewissheiten: Die Ordnung des Regionalen vom Kaiserreich bis zum NS-Regime (2010) is an enquiry into the significance of regionality in German political culture in the first half of the twentieth century. She has published on the history of historiography, and on contemporary British and German political history. Currently she is co-editing a collection which scrutinizes German ideas of 'the West' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and completing a book on political languages of conservatism in West Germany and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.Bernhard Gotto is research fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich. In 2006 he published Nationalsozialistische Kommunalpolitik: Administrative Normalität und Systemstabilisierung durch die Augsburger Stadtverwaltung 1933-1945, which reevaluates the impact of urban administration in Nazi Germany. As well as several books on economic history in the 20th century, he has co-edited two volumes on crisis and the perception of crisis in Germany and France in the 1960s and 1970s. Since 2012 he has coordinated a Leibniz Graduate School on Disappointment in the 20th Century. His current research project scrutinizes the effects of disappointment on democracy in West Germany from 1960 to 1989.

The volume impresses with its high degree of coherence and shows the productivity of a many-faceted analysis of 'Volksgemeinschaft', inspired by cultural history approaches, for the social history of the Nazi regime. Above all, this is due to the introduction which stresses the 'making' of the 'Volksgemeinschaft'. By doing this it brings together hitherto opposed interpretations and opens the perspective for social practices in a fluid "new frame of reference" in which ideas about individuality and normality were fundamentally connected with exclusion and violence.

• PART I: VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT: CONTROVERSIES; PART II: A NEW FRAME OF REFERENCE: IDEOLOGY, ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICES, AND SOCIAL CONTROL; PART III: THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE REGIME: THE PROMISES OF VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT; PART IV: VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT: A RATIONALE FOR VIOLENCE; PART V: THE LIMITS OF VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT POLICIES

Martina Steber is Research Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munichpreviously she was based at the German Historical Institute London. Her first book Ethnische Gewissheiten: Die Ordnung des Regionalen vom Kaiserreich bis zum NS-Regime (2010) is an enquiry into the significance of regionality in German political culture in the first half of the twentieth century. She has published on the history of historiography, and on contemporary British and German political history. Currently she is co-editing a collection which scrutinizes German ideas of 'the West' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and completing a book on political languages of conservatism in West Germany and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.Bernhard Gotto is research fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich. In 2006 he published Nationalsozialistische Kommunalpolitik: Administrative Normalität und Systemstabilisierung durch die Augsburger Stadtverwaltung 1933-1945, which reevaluates the impact of urban administration in Nazi Germany. As well as several books on economic history in the 20th century, he has co-edited two volumes on crisis and the perception of crisis in Germany and France in the 1960s and 1970s. Since 2012 he has coordinated a Leibniz Graduate School on Disappointment in the 20th Century. His current research project scrutinizes the effects of disappointment on democracy in West Germany from 1960 to 1989.

The volume impresses with its high degree of coherence and shows the productivity of a many-faceted analysis of 'Volksgemeinschaft', inspired by cultural history approaches, for the social history of the Nazi regime. Above all, this is due to the introduction which stresses the 'making' of the 'Volksgemeinschaft'. By doing this it brings together hitherto opposed interpretations and opens the perspective for social practices in a fluid "new frame of reference" in which ideas about individuality and normality were fundamentally connected with exclusion and violence.

• PART I: VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT: CONTROVERSIES; PART II: A NEW FRAME OF REFERENCE: IDEOLOGY, ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICES, AND SOCIAL CONTROL; PART III: THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE REGIME: THE PROMISES OF VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT; PART IV: VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT: A RATIONALE FOR VIOLENCE; PART V: THE LIMITS OF VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT POLICIES

Martina Steber is Research Fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munichpreviously she was based at the German Historical Institute London. Her first book Ethnische Gewissheiten: Die Ordnung des Regionalen vom Kaiserreich bis zum NS-Regime (2010) is an enquiry into the significance of regionality in German political culture in the first half of the twentieth century. She has published on the history of historiography, and on contemporary British and German political history. Currently she is co-editing a collection which scrutinizes German ideas of 'the West' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and completing a book on political languages of conservatism in West Germany and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s.Bernhard Gotto is research fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich. In 2006 he published Nationalsozialistische Kommunalpolitik: Administrative Normalität und Systemstabilisierung durch die Augsburger Stadtverwaltung 1933-1945, which reevaluates the impact of urban administration in Nazi Germany. As well as several books on economic history in the 20th century, he has co-edited two volumes on crisis and the perception of crisis in Germany and France in the 1960s and 1970s. Since 2012 he has coordinated a Leibniz Graduate School on Disappointment in the 20th Century. His current research project scrutinizes the effects of disappointment on democracy in West Germany from 1960 to 1989.

The volume impresses with its high degree of coherence and shows the productivity of a many-faceted analysis of 'Volksgemeinschaft', inspired by cultural history approaches, for the social history of the Nazi regime. Above all, this is due to the introduction which stresses the 'making' of the 'Volksgemeinschaft'. By doing this it brings together hitherto opposed interpretations and opens the perspective for social practices in a fluid "new frame of reference" in which ideas about individuality and normality were fundamentally connected with exclusion and violence.

• PART I: VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT: CONTROVERSIES; PART II: A NEW FRAME OF REFERENCE: IDEOLOGY, ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICES, AND SOCIAL CONTROL; PART III: THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE REGIME: THE PROMISES OF VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT; PART IV: VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT: A RATIONALE FOR VIOLENCE; PART V: THE LIMITS OF VOLKSGEMEINSCHAFT POLICIES