“Hitler was Nazi Germany and Nazi Germany was Hitler.” Though true to the extent that Hitler’s personality, leadership, and ideological convictions played a massive role in shaping the nature of government and life during the Third Reich, this popular view has led many writers since the end of World War II to overlook important aspects of Nazism while centering attention solely on Hitler’s contributions to the Nazi Party.
This book seeks to fill a significant gap in the literature by concentrating particularly on the Nazi Party and its growth during the years of the Weimar Republic, examining the paramilitary presence in Germany and Bavaria after World War I. Most of the book describes the development of the Nazi Storm Detachment (Sturmabteilung, or SA) before and after the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. By the time Hitler came to power in January 1933, there were perhaps as many as 400,000 of these brown-shirted men, often self-styled revolutionaries, creating violence on a daily basis and destroying the underpinnings of the Weimar Republic. The book features several photographs captured from the Nazi Party’s Central Publishing Facility in Munich and passed to the author in the late 1950s.

The late Otis C. Mitchell was professor emeritus of history at the University of Cincinnati and author of more than a dozen books in the field of German history.

Otis C. Mitchell
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 199
Bibliographic Info: 16 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013 [2008]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7729-6
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5214-9
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

1. Origins and Inspirations: Prewar Imperial Germany      3

2. The Weimar Republic Rises Among the Ruins      12

3. The Appearance of Hitler      29

INTERPOLATION I. The Munich Matrix of Right Radicalism      38

4. The Infancy of Nazism (1919–1923)      46

INTERPOLATION II. The Bavarian Paramilitary Scene (1919–1923)      57

5. The Failed Putsch      72

6. The Years of Preparation (1924–1930)      83

7. The Reichstag Elections of 1930 and the SA      96

INTERPOLATION III. Battleground Berlin (1925–1933)      106

8. The Shape and Meaning of the Depression SA      117

9. Nazism into Power      139

Epilogue (1933–1934)      154

Chapter Notes      171

Bibliography      181

Index      189

“a valuable read”—The NYMAS Review; “valuable”—Strategy Page.