The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945

by Nicholas Stargardt

In the early 1920s, German culture had been awash with predictions of post-war decay, decline and degeneration, epitomised by Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West. These dire predictions had been overturned by the ‘national rebirth’ in 1933, and many Catholic and Protestant intellectuals continued to hope that the Nazis’ ‘national revolution’ would lead to a spiritual revival even after their first flush of enthusiasm had been tempered by disappointments with the Nazi Party, if not with Hitler himself. Yet their key ideas – especially their rejection of Weimar democracy, liberalism, pacifism, socialism, the Jews and those who had accepted defeat – did not change. The outbreak of a new war brought everything they had thought about 1918 back into focus, testing their belief in Germany’s redemption to the core. This generalised urge to avoid the mistakes of the previous war helps to explain why the Reich’s professional elites were so prepared to engage in lethal violence from the very outset. It also explains the fact that the most extreme measures were not always the work of the most obviously radical and Nazi agencies.15