For many centuries, Germany has enjoyed a reputation as the '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 musicians and their audiences responded to the most significant developments of the twentieth century, including mass media, technological advances, fascism, and war on an unprecedented scale.

For many centuries, Germany has enjoyed a reputation as the '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 musicians and their audiences responded to the most significant developments of the twentieth century, including mass media, technological advances, fascism, and war on an unprecedented scale.

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.

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.

This unique collection brings together extracts both from the most innovative and stimulating recent studies of Nazism as well as many forgotten or ignored older works. Nazism explores how successive generations of commentators and historians have sought to explain and understand the origins, nature, impact, and legacy of this regime of unprecedented destructiveness. A substantial general introduction provides a historical framework to modern Germany and each new section and individual selection is introduced and placed within its context and perspective.

The history, psychology, and pathology of Nazism and its practices have been addressed by an almost limitless list of authors, historians, and researchers since the twilight of the Third Reich. This volume of specially commissioned essays from internationally recognized scholars, available for the first time in paperback, provides a new approach to Nazism in its full spectrum of influence--the history of its racial policy, social systemization, planning for war and genocide, and disturbing legacy. Featuring major authorities in the field, including Ian Kershaw, author of the best-selling biography Hitler, as well as notable British and American academics, Nazism, War and Genocide reflects on the most contemporary research available on the history of the Nazi movement, and shows how Nazism's radical ideological drive penetrated the most far-flung areas of German society and everyday life.

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."