The Nazi Conscience

Claudia Koonz

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English

Harvard Uni.Press Academi
30 November 2005

History; European history; The Holocaust

The Nazi conscience is not an oxymoron. In fact, the perpetrators of genocide had a powerful sense of right and wrong, based on civic values that exalted the moral righteousness of the ethnic community and denounced outsiders.

Claudia Koonz's latest work reveals how racial popularizers developed the infrastructure and rationale for genocide during the so-called normal years before World War II. Her careful reading of the voluminous Nazi writings on race traces the transformation of longtime Nazis' vulgar anti-Semitism into a racial ideology that seemed credible to the vast majority of ordinary Germans who never joined the Nazi Party. Challenging conventional assumptions about Hitler, Koonz locates the source of his charisma not in his summons to hate, but in his appeal to the collective virtue of his people, the Volk.

From 1933 to 1939, Nazi public culture was saturated with a blend of racial fear and ethnic pride that Koonz calls ethnic fundamentalism. Ordinary Germans were prepared for wartime atrocities by racial concepts widely disseminated in media not perceived as political: academic research, documentary films, mass-market magazines, racial hygiene and art exhibits, slide lectures, textbooks, and humor. By showing how Germans learned to countenance the everyday persecution of fellow citizens labeled as alien, Koonz makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust.

The Nazi Conscience chronicles the chilling saga of a modern state so powerful that it extinguished neighborliness, respect, and, ultimately, compassion for all those banished from the ethnic majority.

By: Claudia Koonz
Imprint: Harvard Uni.Press Academi
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 560g
ISBN: 9780674018426
ISBN 10: 0674018427
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 30 November 2005
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Prologue 1. An Ethnic Conscience 2. The Politics of Virtue 3. Allies in the Academy 4. The Conquest of Political Culture 5. Ethnic Revival and Racist Anxiety 6. The Swastika in the Heart of the Youth 7. Law and the Racial Order 8. The Quest for a Respectable Racism 9. Racial Warriors 10. Racial War at Home Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Illustration Credits Index

Claudia Koonz is Professor of History at Duke University.

Reviews for The Nazi Conscience

[Koonz] documents in exemplary fashion what the historical actors actually thought, felt, advocated, planned, and organized before they acted...impressively researched, lucidly organized, disturbing, yet eminently readable.--Michael Meyer American Historical Review (04/01/2007)