Nazi Germany

The history of National Socialism as a movement and a regime remains one of the most compelling and intensively studied aspects of twentieth-century history, one whose significance extends far beyond Germany or even Europe. Featuring ten chapters by leading international experts, this volume presents an up-to-date and authoritative introduction to the history of Nazi Germany. Opening with an introduction delineating the challenges this period of history has posed to historians since 1945, Nazi Germany continues on with chapters that explain how Nazism emerged as an ideology and a political movement; how Hitler and his party took power and remade the German state; and how the Nazi "national community" was organized around a radical and eventually lethal distinction between the "included" and the "excluded." Later chapters discuss the complex relationship between Nazism and Germany's religious faiths; the perverse economic rationality of the regime; the path to war laid down by Hitler's foreign policy; and the intricate and intimate intertwining of war and genocide. The volume concludes with a final chapter on the aftermath of National Socialism in postwar German history and memory.

Jane Caplan is a Professor of Modern European History and a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. She has worked mainly on the history of Nazi Germany. Her current research interests include the history of concentration camps in Nazi Germany, and the documentation of individual identity in 19th-century Europe, especially the written and visual marks of identity on and of the body. She is executive editor of New German Historical Perspectives, and a member of the editorial board of History Workshop Journal.