In Weimar and Nazi Germany, capitalism was hotly contested, discreetly practiced, and politically regulated. This volume shows how it adapted to fit a nation undergoing drastic changes following World War I. Through wide-ranging cultural histories, a transatlantic cast of historians probes the ways contemporaries debated, concealed, promoted, and racialized capitalism. They show how bankers and industrialists, storeowners and commercial designers, intellectuals and politicians reshaped a controversial economic order at a time of fundamental uncertainty and drastic rupture. The book thus sheds fresh light on the strategies used by Hitler and his followers to gain and maintain widespread support. The authors conclude that National Socialism succeeded in mobilizing capitalism's energies while at the same time claiming to have overcome a system they identified with pernicious Jewish influences. In so doing, the volume also speaks to the broader issue of how capitalism can adapt to new times.

Neighbors and Enemies provides an interpretation of the collapse of Germany's first democracy, the Weimar Republic, which ended with the naming of Adolf Hitler as chancellor in January 1933. This study focuses on individual workers in Berlin and their strategies to confront the crises in their daily lives introduced by the transformation of society after 1918 and intensified during the Depression. Tensions between the sexes and generations, among neighbours, within families, and between citizens and their political parties led to the emergence of a radical - and at times violent - neighbourhood culture that signalled a loss of faith in political institutions. Swett offers an interpretation that marries a history of daily life in Depression-era Berlin with an analysis of the meanings of local politics in workers' communities, shifting our focus for understanding Weimar's collapse from the halls of governmental power to the streets of the urban core.

Neighbors and Enemies provides an interpretation of the collapse of Germany's first democracy, the Weimar Republic, which ended with the naming of Adolf Hitler as chancellor in January 1933. This study focuses on individual workers in Berlin and their strategies to confront the crises in their daily lives introduced by the transformation of society after 1918 and intensified during the Depression. Tensions between the sexes and generations, among neighbours, within families, and between citizens and their political parties led to the emergence of a radical - and at times violent - neighbourhood culture that signalled a loss of faith in political institutions. Swett offers an interpretation that marries a history of daily life in Depression-era Berlin with an analysis of the meanings of local politics in workers' communities, shifting our focus for understanding Weimar's collapse from the halls of governmental power to the streets of the urban core.

"Selling under the Swastika" is the first in-depth study of commercial advertising in the Third Reich. While scholars have focused extensively on the political propaganda that infused daily life in Nazi Germany, they have paid little attention to the role played by commercial ads and sales culture in legitimizing and stabilizing the regime. Historian Pamela Swett explores the extent of the transformation of the German ads industry from the internationally infused republican era that preceded 1933 through the relative calm of the mid-1930s and into the war years. She argues that advertisements helped to normalize the concept of a "racial community," and that individual consumption played a larger role in the Nazi worldview than is often assumed. Furthermore, "Selling under the Swastika" demonstrates that commercial actors at all levels, from traveling sales representatives to company executives and ad designers, enjoyed relative independence as they sought to enhance their professional status and boost profits through the manipulation of National Socialist messages.