Neil Gregor - Böcker

The Nazi regime was a regime of unparalleled destructiveness. Nazism presents both key texts from some of the most innovative and challenging of more recent studies and extracts from the older historiography of the origins, nature, impact, and legacy of the National Socialist regime. It suggests both the need to re-read and re-consider much forgotten or ignored texts from earlier generations of commentators and the possibility of considering afresh the structure, style of rule, and consequences of National Socialism in the context provided by the end of the cold war. The texts connect the experiences of the Jewish and non-Jewish victims of Nazi aggression and genocide; links the fates of the victims with analysis of the perpetrators; and stresses the consequences of this unprecedented collapse in civilised values for post war Germany and the world.

A new history of how the musical worlds of German towns and cities were transformed during the Nazi era.In the years after the Nazis came to power in January 1933 and through the war years all aspects of life in Germany changed. However, despite the social and political upheaval, gentile citizens were able to continue leisure activities such as attending concerts. In this book, historian Neil Gregor surveys the classical concert scene in Nazi Germany from the perspective of the audience, rather than institutions or performers. Gregor delves into the cultural lives of ordinary Germans under conditions of dictatorship. Did the ways in which Germans heard music in the period change? Did a Nazi way of listening emerge?For audiences, Gregor shows, changes to the concert experience were small and often took place around the edges. This, combined with the preserved idea of the concert hall as a space of imagined civility and cultivation, led many concertgoers and music lovers to claim after the war that their field and their practice had been innocent-a place to retreat from the vicious violence and racism of the Nazi regime. Drawing on untapped archival sources, The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany reveals that the true history was one of disruption but also of near effortless adaptation. Through countless small acts, the symphony concert was reframed within the languages of strident nationalism, racism, and militarism to ensure its place inside the cultural cosmos of National Socialist Germany.

German History from the Margins offers new ways of thinking about ethnic and religious minorities and other outsiders in modern German history. Many established paradigms of German history are challenged by the contributors' new and often provocative findings, including evidence of the striking cosmopolitanism of Germany's 19th-century eastern border communities; German Jewry's sophisticated appropriation of the discourse of tribe and race; the unexpected absence of antisemitism in Weimar's campaign against smut; the Nazi embrace of purportedly "Jewish" sexual behavior; and post-war West Germany's struggles with ethnic and racial minorities despite its avowed liberalism. Germany's minorities have always been active partners in defining what it is to be German, and even after 1945, despite the legacy of the Nazis' murderous destructiveness, German society continues to be characterized by ethnic and cultural diversity.

What was the relationship between German big business and the Third Reich? To what extent did business leaders collaborate with the Nazis? This book examines the experience of the Daimler-Benz company—one of Germany’s most important armament manufacturers and automobile makers—from its formation in 1926 through the end of World War II. Based on a substantial body of new material from formerly inaccessible East German archives and previously closed Mercedes-Benz AG records, the book reveals for the first time a close association between the car manufacturer and the Nazi system, from 1933 onwards.Neil Gregor traces the early history of the Daimler-Benz company and examines how opportunities offered by Nazi rearmament in the 1930s led to its rapid expansion and a surge in profits. Focusing mainly on the war years, Gregor demonstrates how the company succeeded in exploiting the demands of the war economy while situating its operations most advantageously for resumption of commercial activity in peacetime. Despite Allied bombing, says Gregor, Daimler-Benz AG emerged from the war in good shape—with a clear operating strategy, a largely intact inventory, and core production lines geared for the peacetime market. With its own interests and preservation as prime motives, the company acquiesced in the exploitation of forced labor, thereby actively intensifying the suffering of civilians, prisoners of war, and Jews and other victims of concentration camps. He concludes that the ability of Daimler-Benz to protect its interests during the war and to manage the transition to peace was predicated upon collusion in the racial barbarism of the Nazi regime.

Nuremberg—a city associated with Nazi excesses, party rallies, and the extreme anti-Semitic propaganda published by Hitler ally Julius Streicher—has struggled since the Second World War to come to terms with the material and moral legacies of Nazism. This book explores how the Nuremberg community has confronted the implications of the genocide in which it participated, while also dealing with the appalling suffering of ordinary German citizens during and after the war. Neil Gregor’s compelling account of the painful process of remembering and acknowledging the Holocaust offers new insights into postwar memory in Germany and how it has operated. Gregor takes a novel approach to the theme of memory, commemoration, and remembrance, and he proposes a highly nuanced explanation for the failure of Germans to face up to the Holocaust for years after the war. His book makes a major contribution to the social and cultural history of Germany.

Approaching the writing of major intellectuals, artists, and philosophers need no longer be daunting. How to Read is a new sort of introduction--a personal master class in reading--that brings you face to face with the work of some of the most influential and challenging writers in history. In lucid, accessible language, these books explain essential topics such as the implicit and explicit genocidal message within Hitler's writing.

Now available for the first time in paperback, this volume of specially commissioned essays brings together contributions by internationally recognised scholars from Britain, Germany and the USA to present and reflect upon the latest research on the history of the Third Reich. The book provides a new approach to the history of Nazism’s racial policy, its social policy, its planning for war and genocide, and its legacy. It shows how Nazism’s radical ideological drive penetrated the most diverse areas of German society and everyday life. It reminds us that the crimes of the Third Reich were ultimately born of the decisions of a political, military and administrative leadership of singular ambition, drive and brutality.

Now available for the first time in paperback, this volume of specially commissioned essays brings together contributions by internationally recognised scholars from Britain, Germany and the USA to present and reflect upon the latest research on the history of the Third Reich. The book provides a new approach to the history of Nazism’s racial policy, its social policy, its planning for war and genocide, and its legacy. It shows how Nazism’s radical ideological drive penetrated the most diverse areas of German society and everyday life. It reminds us that the crimes of the Third Reich were ultimately born of the decisions of a political, military and administrative leadership of singular ambition, drive and brutality.

Incoherent, obsessive and violent, Hitler's ideas nonetheless found an audience of millions and led to one of the most horrific and devastating conflicts of the 20th century. Taking two of Hitler's texts as his starting point, Neil Gregor discusses 'this second-rate mind of great power' and helps the reader to understand the nature and popular reception of Hitler's crude but hugely influential writings.

For many centuries, Germany has enjoyed a reputation as `land of music'. But just how was this reputation established and transformed over time, and to what extent was it produced within or outside of Germany? Through case studies that range from Bruckner to the Beatles and from symphonies to dance-club music, this volume looks at how German music responded to the most significant developments of the twentieth century, including mass media, technological advances, mass migration, and war on an unprecedented scale.