How does a political system rebuild after a cataclysmic military defeat? How can a society, and its political infrastructure, resurrects itself or, in the case of Germany after World War II, be resurrected in such a way as to ensure long-term political stability?

Politics After Hitler is the first book to demonstrate the importance of America, Britain, and France in the development of party politics in Germany after 1945. In the wake of the war, rightists of all descriptions, Communists, nationalists, and founders of small splinter parties all came under intense and deliberate pressure from the Western occupying forces. The occupiers arrived in Germany in 1945 without firm plans for reviving German politics and were forced to improvise by hastily constructing a licensing system for new parties. The Allies then used their licensing powers to limit and steer party politics in desirable directions, disempowering reactionary and hypernationalist forces, diluting fears of a Communist revolution, and preventing the political fragmentation that led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic a generation earlier.

Based on extensive archival research, Politics After Hitler concludes that interference by the occupying forces made a stable and moderate party system in the FRG much more likely than has previously been assumed. The Allied occupation of Germany was therefore a resounding success in helping move the German political system toward the stability it enjoys to the present day.

The consequences of Germany's twelve-year Nazi regime continue to reverberate and to spark debate among scholars and the general public. In this volume leading scholars present provocative essays probing the nature, history, and aftermath of the Nazi regime, including its connections to the Federal Republic of Germany after the war. The essays address the nature of Nazism as reflected in contemporary perceptions of Nazi Germany in the United States; the origins and character of fascism; the many forms of antisemitism; German scholars' efforts to promote persecution in the Third Reich; the role of ethnic Germans in the anti-Jewish and anti-Slavic policies of the Reich; the actions of German police in the occupation of eastern Europe and in the Holocaust; Hitler's style of leadership; the nazification of the German military high command; and the politics surrounding the memory of Nazism and the Holocaust after 1945. The Impact of Nazism employs diverse approaches, exploits a variety of new and long-available sources, and asks new questions, making clear the profound connections between the Nazis and the world that survived them. Alan E. Steinweis is an associate professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts. Daniel E. Rogers is an associate professor of history at the University of South Alabama. He is the author of Politics after Hitler: The Western Allies and the German Party System.