19 MARCH 1983, Page 27

Fatherland

Richard Calvocoressi

Modern Germany: Society, Economy and Politics in the Twentieth Century V. R. Berghahn (Cambridge University Press £20, £6.95)

Hitler studies in this anniversary year appear to be in a state of confusion at least in Germany. Scholars publish in learned journals the results of research into the most obscure aspects of National Socialist ideology, while a flood of popular illustrated books, some of them clearly designed to clean up Nazism's image, threatens to drown their work. For the in- terested non-specialist in this field, a Ger- man bookshop can be a bewildering ex- perience.

There is good reason, therefore, to welcome V. R Berghahn's lucid and in- telligent study of modern Germany's tur- bulent history, not least because it states certain truths which from time to time need restating. The negative achievements of the Third Reich, for instance, are shown in pro- Per perspective. Hitler was neither an isolated phenomenon nor a particularly original mind but, as Professor Berghahn argues someone who cleverly exploited anti-democratic and racist sentiments already held by a politically influential sec- tion of the population intent on finding scapegoats for Germany's defeat in the first world war and for the collapse of society as they had known it. But it was not 'the Ger- mans' — not even a majority of them who brought Hitler to power, a point which Professor Berghahn is right to stress. The Chaotic system of proportional representa- tion in the Weimar Republic, since rectified by the five per cent clause and split vote, greatly facilitated the Nazis' rise, decisively so when it became obvious that the Com- munists, on Stalin's orders, would refuse to collaborate with the Social Democrats after the Reichstag elections of November 1932. As well as helping to usher Hitler in, pro- portional representation also had the effect of keeping the Social Democrats out. Ex- cept for an 18-month period between 1928 and 1930, they were not to be the major governing party again until 1969, when Wil- ly Brandt became Chancellor of the Federal r,KePublic. Last summer the 13-year-old Social Democratic-Liberal coalition finally came to an end. Its successor, as we all know, was decided on 6 March. The Nazis themselves referred to Hitler's accession to the Chancellorship as die Machtergreifung ('seizure of power') — a characteristically melodramatic expression for what was, after all, a quasi-legal transfer. Professor Berghahn explains why it was so important for Hitler to hold elec- tions shortly after coming to power in 1933. With the two-thirds parliamentary majority which he hoped to obtain, the government could be granted an act enabling it to assume dictatorial powers, independent of the President, for four years. And this is precisely what happened. On paper at least, the Nazis operated within a framework of legality.

As for the character of the regime itself, Professor Berghahn confines himself to judgments based on an analysis of the known facts, many of which speak for themselves. More interesting is his examina- tion of the members of those social categories who were worst hit by the first war and the various ways in which, psychologically if not materially, they tried to come to terms with their lot. The fact that 'hundreds of thousands of children grew up without a father and with their mothers drawing no more than a meagre pension' probably accounts for the Nazis' success in appealing to adolescents.

The question as to whether the Nazis were given financial support by industry is one that troubles many a German today. Professor Berghahn's answer is un- equivocal: 'Big business ... did not "pay Hitler" in the sense that it provided the bulk of the funds for the Nazi election cam- paigns'. He does concede, however, that a large donation from Krupp helped the Nazis after they had come to power to fight the elections of March 1933.

Stalin's opinion after the war that Nazism was essentially a product of the crisis of capitalism is still the line taken by official East German historians who are on- ly too happy to point to what they see as Fascist tendencies in western societies, especially the Federal Republic. In the G.D.R., 'the first socialist state on German soil', they have of course been eradicated. What the Russians did succeed in destroy- ing, as Professor Berghahn shows, was the entire social and economic structure which they believed had made Nazism possible. This was in striking contrast to denazifica- tion in western zones, which was conducted along ideological lines. The subsequent `Americanisation' of the West German economy, which affected all aspects of political and cultural life, has been challenged in the last decade or so, with the result that the values and aspirations of the Wirtschaftswunder, particularly in the arts, in styles of living and in attitudes to the en- vironment, are no longer so widely ac- cepted. Hostility to nuclear weapons, which is not confined to the younger generation, is part of the same reaction and must be understood in the context of Germany's ex- ceptionally violent past.

Professor Berghahn is convinced that the clue to that violence lies in the very rapid in- dustrialisation which Germany experienced from the late 19th century, unleashing 'a social and political crisis which overstretch- ed the capacity of the existing institutions'. Now that the Germans have more or less come to terms with their past, it is hard to imagine instability on such a scale recur- ring. But with rising unemployment (two ,nd a half million, or 12 per cent, at the last count) and the increasingly emotional nature of the nuclear arms debate, the future of the Federal Republic seems less certain than at any time in its 34-year-old history. Professor Berghahn's book is a salutary reminder of certain hard facts of international politics we may dislike but which it would be foolish to ignore: the economic arguments for waging expan- sionist war; the ease with which appease- ment or pacifist feelings can be exploited; the economic reasons, again, for building up nuclear as opposed to conventional defences (a fiercely discussed question in the West Germany of the 1950s); and final- ly, and more specifically, Stalin's proposal in 1952 that the two Germanies should reunite to form a neutral demilitarised zone `committed to peace'. The latter sounds suspiciously like the idea of a nuclear-free Germany suggested recently by Honecker but rejected by Kohl on the grounds that it would significantly increase the risk of con- ventional armed conflict.