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deliberately planned modernization'.109 Somewhat nebulously, he inquires:

Might one not also therefore ask, could the preparation and execution of a war of annihilation, the modeling of an empire of the Aryan master race, not trigger impulses with a modernizing effect, which were not planned as such, but which, even after the failure of these undertakings and at a terrible price, would benefit the survivors and future generations?110

In Wehler's work there is also a clear tendency to oppose views that have never been put forward by any serious historian: "The regime's social policy was never concerned with delivering the equality of opportunity that the democratic constitutional and welfare state supports as a normative guideline.'111 This goes without saying, and it would indeed be absurd to claim any such thing.112 However, this does not invalidate the thesis that Hitler and the National Socialists were interested in improving social mobility and creating advancement opportunities for working-class members of the Volksgemeinschaft.

The evidence cited by Wehler to support his assertions is by no means convincing. If we look at the concrete results of the regime's frequently overstated social policy, we see that the Weimar Republic spent nine percent of total national product on social benefits in 1929, in contrast to the NS regime, which spent only six percent in 1939.113 The fact that a state should spend more on social benefits in times of mass unemployment (1.9 million people were unemployed in 1929) than in times of full employment (119,000 were unemployed in 1939) is a weak objection to what Wehler calls the "frequently overstated' social policy of the Third Reich.

In 2010, Mommsen also underestimated the actual outcomes of National Socialist social policy, as subsequent research has gone on to show, when he stated:


The elimination of the division between capital and labor was limited to public gestures such as expanding participation in May Day celebrations beyond the working class, and to minor social

reforms, such as the introduction of limitations on dividend payments, cosmetic programs such as "Strength through Joy' and "The Beauty of Work', and soliciting donations from the upper class for the provision of soup kitchens and winter aid.114

The view put forward by Wehler and Mommsen does not correspond to the current state of research. Norbert Frei, who, as has been shown, critically assessed my theses in 1993,115 may well have expressed the consensus that has largely come to prevail in research today when, in his overall account of the Third Reich, he writes:

The social policy pursued by the consolidated National Socialist regime was not merely reactionary or rhetorical. It was also more than a precisely calculated means to achieve the goal of totalitarian manipulation of the people. Although the DAF's socio-political activity ... may initially have been motivated by power politics, this led to a substantial and, in parts, even progressive social policy.

For example, Frei cites the fact that paid vacation, which during the NS era increased from an average of three to between six and 12 days, was "from an international perspective, a progressive achievement'. 116 And, he observes, one of the most remarkable successes of National Socialist social and societal policy had been "to cultivate a feeling of social equality'.117

In contrast to a previously widely held view, Frei emphasizes the fact that neither the rise of the NSDAP nor the rapid development and broad acceptance of the NS regime can be explained primarily by its use of totalitarian manipulation techniques. Although such manipulation techniques were brought to bear,

the decisive factor was that the regime, like the "Movement' before it, succeeded in convincingly addressing the wants and needs of broad sections of the population, adopting their concerns as its own cause, and at least partially satisfying their desires. This was the modernity of the National Socialist's state; this is the explanation for its sustained ability to mobilise the masses and maintain their loyalty.

In the years after 1933, Frei explains, many ordinary people, peasants, workers and employees, for the first time developed a feeling of being taken seriously and understood politically: "At what other point in German history had the state paid such strident and demonstrative attention or devoted so many resources to providing a social safety net for the people?'118

On this, I agree with everything Frei writes. In fact, his analysis offers far more to confirm my views than to contradict them. Admittedly, Frei does not go as far as to talk of a "revolution' because, in his opinion, there was no fundamental change in class structures.119 In his book, however, he resolutely argues against falling into the trap of understanding modernization merely as the "unintended or even dysfunctional side effects of a fundamentally reactionary and atavistic policy'. Rather, he argues, these effects should be regarded as "harbingers of the regime's attempts to implement its project of modernity in the specific variant of a racial system'.120 These findings, which have since become widely accepted in research, prove that there was indeed a correlation between Hitler's socio-political objectives, as analysed in my book, and the reality of the Third Reich. At the same time, however, it remains true that many of Hitler's goals - as I demonstrate repeatedly in this book - were never fully realized and should be regarded more as a goal or vision of the future.

Taking their lead from the work of Henry A. Turner,121 researchers have long held the view that Hitler's overriding objective was to fashion an anti-modern agricultural utopia. Before my book was published, this interpretation was common in numerous accounts of Hitler and National Socialism. In Section V of this book (Hitler: An Opponent of Modern Industrial Society?), however, I provide a wealth of evidence to refute Turner's thesis. Instead, I prove that Hitler was a proponent of modern industrial society and particularly admired the United States in this respect. In addition, I prove in Section V that Hitler did not see "Lebensraum in the East' as an experimental field for some future agrarian utopia, as had been

repeatedly claimed in earlier research, but rather as a source of raw materials and a market for German goods.

Even Wehler, who, in terms of fundamentals, strongly rejects my interpretation of Hitler, agrees with my research findings on some points and criticizes the thesis which prevailed until the publication of my book - and which I refuted - that

'Hitler, and with him National Socialism, strove to create a backward-looking, almost archaic utopia founded on pre-industrial, even pre-capitalist ideas'. He objects:

No, Hitler's economic policies did not seek to roll back the wheel of history in order to create a romanticised agrarian world. Hitler wanted to transform Germany into a highly industrialised nation that, if he had his way, would even surpass the United States.122

And the desire for Lebensraum in the East - another point upon which Wehler agrees with my conclusions - was "by no means, as has often been misleadingly asserted, driven by a desire to create a backward-looking agrarian utopia for the settlement of German soldier-farmers', but was motivated by "the primary objective of exploiting the immeasurable industrial and agricultural resources and raw material deposits, coupled with the enormous business opportunities in this substantial, new domestic market'.123

So, have recent researchers generally tended to accept or reject my theses on the modernity of Hitler's worldview? It is impossible to provide a definitive answer. On the one hand, the sources I used to prove Hitler's enthusiasm for technology, to explain the economic justifications for his Lebensraum ideas and to confirm his admiration for American industrial society are so unambiguous that many authors followed suit and cited the same evidence in their books. On the other hand, many authors seemed afraid to follow this evidence through to the logical conclusion that Hitler and National Socialism did display the hallmarks of modernity. How can this contradiction be explained?

Wolfgang König's study on the National Socialist consumer society and its Volksprodukte (Volkswagen, Volksempfänger, etc.) provides an exemplary illustration of precisely this phenomenon. On

the one hand, in terms of Hitler's enthusiasm for technology, König embraces the findings of my book (which he repeatedly refers to in his footnotes).124 At the same time, however, he opposes the use of the term "modernization' and provides a very clear analysis of the primary reason so many historians are reluctant to describe Hitler as "modern'. König refers to an "ethical problem' and goes on to explain:

In the social sciences, "modernization' was introduced as an analytical concept. In the public sphere, however, the term "modernity' had already come to occupy a specific political and moral space. "Modernity' represented the unfinished project of the Enlightenment; it served the left and liberal spectrum as a banner around which they could gather to position themselves against conservative traditionalism ... The close links between the descriptive and the normative ... in the terms "modernization' and "modernity' was bound to cause confusion when applied to National Socialism.125

Peter Fritzsche published his thoughts on my theses in 1995. On the one hand, he dismisses the critics of my theses who argued that the Third Reich was still a class-based society and that social benefits remained too low:

To claim therefore, that Nazi Germany remained divided by class or that social welfare provisions were inadequate, as critics do, does not invalidate Zitelmann's central point about the Nazi leadership's conceptualisation of itself.126

In fact, an analysis of Hitler's objectives, intentions and worldview cannot be refuted simply by drawing attention to the fact that these were either never or only partially implemented in the social reality of the Third Reich. This is simply an issue of using two entirely different levels of argumentation and analysis, namely the analysis of intentions and objectives on the one hand, and the analysis of actual economic and social changes on the other. Even without detailed analysis it is clear - as I explicitly point out repeatedly throughout this book - that Hitler's social and economic policy objectives were only partially realized in the period from 1933 to 1945. There were

many reasons that he was never able to fully implement his policy objectives. One was the brevity of the time available; another was the consideration he had to give to groups whose support he needed during the war.

Fritzsche also correctly points out that I never adopt a normative approach to the concept of modernization and that I do not believe that modernity and liberalism are inseparable concepts:

Moreover, their [Prinz and Zitelmann] model of modernization excludes the political attributes - enhanced participation of freethinking individuals in the public sphere - with which it has always been associated. Indeed, Zitelmann deliberately severs social and economic progress from political liberalism. By rejecting normative approaches, he claims to encourage a more "value-free' discussion of modernization, a process he sees taking place both in totalitarian and liberal regimes. The tag of illiberalism, in other words, should not disqualify a candidate for the title of "moderniser'.127

His words paint an accurate description of my position.

Fritzsche does not, however, remain entirely uncritical of the positions adopted by myself or Götz Aly. He believes that we confuse means and ends and that, for Hitler, social policy was never more than a means by which to realize his racial goals.128 Nevertheless, he does admit that I have identified a crucial aspect that previous research had failed to appreciate:

Even so, Zitelmann and Prinz have identified a crucial aspect of National Socialism that the historiographical emphasis on Nazi propaganda, Nazi terror, and Nazi genocide had missed: the degree to which the Nazis were committed to renovating German society. Although the Hitler regime cannot be adequately described as merely a German version of Beveridge's England or Roosevelt's America, the Nazis operated in the subjunctive tense, experimenting, reordering, reconstructing, and it is this spirit of renovation that qualifies National Socialism as modern.129


Mark Roseman also devoted attention to my work in 1996. He agrees - like so many other authors - with my empirical findings on

Hitler's objectives: "Zitelmann has undoubtedly surprised us with the degree to which Hitler was a child of the modern age.' He continues:

The real meat of the controversy and the real value of recent work is that it has irrevocably demonstrated that the Nazis subjectively and objectively operated on the terrain of industrial society. Agrarian pipedreams existed only on the peripheries of Nazi thought. Nazi social policy often embodied innovative responses to problems of industrial society, responses that sometimes paralleled, sometimes preceded analogous efforts in other advanced industrial nations and which in any case often proved themselves consistent with the smooth functioning of that society. Nazi policy was not dysfunctional.130

At the same time, Roseman goes on to register his opposition to my views by arguing that the racial justifications for the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft represented a break with the fundamental values of western societies, especially with regard to the relationship between the individual and the collective.131 "But it is equally clear that Nazi goals cannot be seen as largely analogous with those of other western nations,' he writes.132 This, however, is not something I have ever claimed. Again, it becomes clear that, ultimately, it is the normative implications of a concept of modernization based on western liberal society that has formed the basis for disagreement between researchers.

Klaus Hildebrand, who argues that Hitler wanted to exploit the concept of modernity to steer Germany into a pre- or anti-modern utopia,133 regards the dispute over the modernity of National Socialism as the result of different understandings of the term. Hildebrand observed in 2009:

As is often the case with scientific disputes of this kind, the very fact that this ongoing dispute ever arose, or perhaps was even predestined to arise, owes much to the terminology associated with the disputed subject matter: Some, such as Hans Mommsen and Heinrich August Winkler, for example, associate the project of modernity, the process of modernization and the claim of modernity in a normative sense to democratisation, emancipation and humanity, while others, Rainer Zitelmann and Michael Prinz, for

example, sever these positive connotations and testify to the modernizing intentions and effects of even such a deeply reprehensible system as National Socialism.134

But perhaps there is more to the dispute than differing interpretations of a term. When my book was first published, the world was in the throes of an almost boundless progressive optimism, which infected many historians and political scientists. Communist systems had collapsed and the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, in a book that was widely read at the time, even defined the moment as the "end of history'135 - the conclusive, universal victory of liberal democracy.

In 1987, shortly before the caesura years of 1989 and beyond, the political scientist Martin Kriele argued in his book Die demokratische Weltrevolution that the ultimate global triumph of democracy was dictated by a universal natural law. He cites Hegel and Kant's teleological philosophy of history, according to which world history was progress toward, and the realization of, freedom. It was in this vein that Joachim Fest, the author of a seminal biography of Hitler, wrote an essay in which he declared "the end of the utopian age'.

In 1991, I made my firm opposition to this thesis known.136 In an essay entitled "Die totalitäre Seite der Moderne', I cautioned: "There is a clear danger that we become too impressed by a fascination with current developments. We need to maintain a healthy sense of scepticism when some commentators speak with undue haste of the end of history and the final victory of the democratic order.'137 As the intervening 30 years have demonstrated, I was, unfortunately, correct.

National Socialism, along with Stalinism in Russia, are two examples from the 20th century that show that modernization and democracy do not have to go hand in hand. Today, the example of China demonstrates once again that dynamic modernization does not necessarily have to be matched by democratization and the creation of a liberal and free society.

The most erudite summary of the controversy surrounding Die Ambivalenz der Moderne im Nationalsozialismus (The Ambivalence of Modernity under National Socialism) was published by Riccardo Bavaj in 2003. His essay explores in detail the theses advocated by Michael Prinz and myself, as well as presenting the rebuttals put forward by historians such as Frei, Bajohr and Mommsen.138 So what conclusion did Bavaj draw? From the perspective of the fundamental contingency of history and from the perspective of the indissoluble ambivalence of modernity, "there are good reasons to argue for a critical concept of modernization, and modernity, stripped of all normative implications'.

Modernization and inhumanity are not necessarily mutually exclusive, just as inhuman modernization is in no way a contradictio in adjecto.139 The Third Reich, Bavaj concluded, was not a deviation from the secular development process of modernization and "at its core was decidedly forward-looking and future-oriented'. This was one of the reasons, he observed, why National Socialism succeeded in exerting such a strong attraction over so many people at the time. "National Socialism can be understood less as an alternative to modernity than as a template for a different expression of modernity,' he writes.140 This interpretation corresponds to my own theses, which I had developed in detail in several essays.141

In the socio-political realm, Bavaj states:

National Socialism favored the erosion of traditional milieus, the relaxation and deconstruction of the traditional structures of German society, even though this modernization was achieved to wildly different degrees, especially given the oftentimes considerable persistence of rural and religious milieus.142

Bavaj recognizes the revolutionary claims of National Socialism and the conclusion of a political revolution in 1933-34, while at the same time rejecting the thesis that National Socialism also represented a social revolution.
Questions surrounding the modernity of National Socialism continue to intensively occupy researchers to this day. Mark

Roseman stated in 2011: "More than most other recent historical phenomena and issues, the Third Reich has provoked intense scrutiny of its relationship to the modern world.' 143 For Roseman, the problem with this debate stems partly from a lack of clarity about what "modernity' actually means and partly from the rejection of older modernization theories' normative assumptions (in which modernization was inseparably linked to democratization and pluralism), which have frequently been supplanted by a new moralizing "counter-narrative about modernity's "fatal potential", and partly that the Nazis were a product of their particular epoch than of a generic modern'.

Roseman shares my view that it is impossible to sustain the thesis of Hitler's and the National Socialism's allegedly backward-looking agricultural utopias, but asks the question: "If neither the Nazis nor many of their supporters were looking backward (except in the sense that all nationalists call on past myths and symbols), what did it mean to say they were modern?'144 For Roseman, the debate about National Socialism and modernization is above all confirmation of the limits of modernization theory:

Nazism certainly showed what a modern society could do. Our resulting disenchantment with the trappings of advanced industrial societies has been profound and enduring, and has caused us to rethink concepts such as progress, civilisation, and modernization. But the effort to link National Socialism to pervasive or generic elements of modernity has shown not only the peculiarities of that strange and awful dictatorship, but also the fatal limitations of modernity as a concept with which to explain change in the modern world.145


National Socialist Revolution?

Hitler and the National Socialists regarded themselves as revolutionaries, as this book shows. The thesis that the National Socialist seizure of power was a "revolution' is by no means new. It had already been advocated by numerous researchers before me.

Nevertheless, the discussion about whether it really was a revolution and, if so, what its contents and goals were, continues to this day.

According to Franz Janka in his 1997 book Die braune Gesellschaft: Ein Volk wird formatiert (The Brown Society: A Regimented People):

When one considers everything that was eliminated, erased or transformed in or by the Third Reich, one can hardly circumvent the concept of revolution. National Socialism eclipsed everything that had ever existed before.146

It was, as Janka explains, precisely this planned social transformation that made National Socialism such a ray of hope for the people and had such a revolutionary effect.147

According to Janka, in the Third Reich, a person's income, position and origin were no longer considered as markers by which to judge their position within society.

By redefining the criteria in this way, the National Socialists were able to deliver on their promise of a classless society relatively quickly. However, this in no way eliminated actual societal differences or their causes; rather, it was a conscious reinterpretation of what was considered socially valuable, and thus had the effect of shifting the social consciousness of each individual, in that many Germans increasingly felt that their social position had improved.148

Janka takes Hitler's self-conceptualization as a revolutionary seriously and believes that any refusal to apply the concept of revolution to National Socialism is coloured by the belief "that a radical shift in the development of the history of class struggle should, by necessity, deliver a positive qualitative leap and therefore represent a "good" revolution'.149 Hitler, however, was not a poor imitation of any historical model, "he was a "homo novus" who believed in his mission as a revolutionary and convinced many to share this belief'.150

In 2000, Mommsen explored whether the National Socialist conquest of power could best be described as a revolution or a

counterrevolution. Formulations such as the following did little to clarify the matter:

One might consider it a trivial objection to consciously restrict the concept of revolution to phenomena of abrupt change in the social or political order while refusing to regard the rampantly exaggerated ideological goals typical of National Socialism, i.e., the coercion of chimerical Chiliastic visions, as revolutionary.

According to Mommsen, "fascist movements', and in particular National Socialism, should be interpreted as "counter- or rather post-revolutionary developments' and it should be "clear to all that no manifestation of fascism can ever be placed on the same historical level as variants of communist totalitarianism, but should be seen as their reactive simulation'. At the same time, Mommsen warns that it was misleading to focus on the purely counterrevolutionary nature of the National Socialist movement, "because like all new social movements on the right-wing party spectrum, it aimed at a fundamental reorganisation of society and overcoming the bourgeois structures of the 19th century'.151 Mommsen's reluctance to refer to National Socialism as a "revolution' is obvious, in stark contrast to his willingness to apply the term to communist revolutions. Nevertheless, it is clear that the arguments advanced to reject the applicability of the term "revolution' are weak and diffuse.

Richard Evans, who from 2003 to 2008 published a comprehensive three-volume account of the Third Reich, addresses this question in chapter 6 of the first volume of his trilogy. His answer is that the illegal nature of the National Socialist seizure of power in the first half of 1933 made it a "revolutionary overthrow of the existing political system', whereby the rhetoric of the "National Socialist revolution' was designed as an implicit justification of illegal acts.152 "The violence that was central to the seizure of power gave it a distinctly revolutionary flavor,' writes Evans.153

Evans is nevertheless sceptical about whether the National Socialist revolution can really be described as a revolution. The French Revolution, as the archetype of modern revolutions, anticipated the elements of the great ideologies that shaped Europe

in the following two centuries - from communism and anarchism to liberalism and conservatism.

But National Socialism was not among them. The Nazis, indeed, thought of themselves as undoing all of the work of the French revolution and rolling back the clock ... All the ideologies to which the French Revolution had given birth were to be destroyed.154

Following Evans' train of thought for a moment, does this not then mean that National Socialism qualifies all the more as a revolution? If a revolution is indeed a radical break with the past, then surely National Socialism is precisely such a movement, regarding itself as it did as the most radical negation of traditions since the French Revolution and should therefore be characterized as a revolution. In this respect Evans' argumentation is not consistent.155

Evans highlights another difference: the French Revolution, he claims, had "a clear set of doctrines', as did the Russian Revolution of October 1917. "By contrast,' he explains, "the Nazis had no explicit plan to reorder society, indeed no fully worked-out model of the society they said they wanted to revolutionise. Hitler himself seems to have thought of the Revolution as a changeover of personnel in positions of power and authority.'156 Evans goes on to explain that Hitler's followers in the SA's idea of revolution was "in the end little more than the continuation of the brawling and fighting to which they had become accustomed during the seizure of power'.157 And, "for all their aggressively egalitarian rhetoric, the Nazis were relatively indifferent, in the end, to the inequalities of society'.158 The findings I present in this book speak clearly against such a view. The assertion that Hitler's concept of a National Socialist revolution only extended as far as a "changeover of personnel' can only be supported by researchers who have failed to engage more intensively with Hitler's thinking. In Chapter II.3 of this book, I show that National Socialists saw their revolution as the attempt to radically restructure every single sector of human life in the sense of their Weltanschauung.

Presumably the unwillingness to describe National Socialism as a "revolution', especially among historians such as Evans, who sees

himself as decidedly left-wing, is connected with the fact that the term "revolution' typically has numerous positive connotations.159 Even outside academia, the term "revolution' is widely regarded as being loaded with positive associations, in contrast to the terms "reactionary' or "counterrevolutionary'. No advertising agency, for example, would describe a new automobile as a "counterrevolution' in car design, whereas "revolution' certainly sounds like progress.160 The same is true for terms such as "social', "egalitarian', "welfare state' and "social state' - all of which I personally would have difficulty associating with purely positive connotations, but which are often used positively in political discourse and by many historians. The reluctance to associate Hitler and National Socialism with these terms is fed by their positive normative connotations - as already shown above with the example of the debate surrounding the term "modernity'.161

Some historians who deny the egalitarian impacts of National Socialism do so because they employ the scope and radicality of communist revolutions as their yardstick. In the second volume of his comprehensive account of the Third Reich, Evans, a historian who has his roots in the Marxist tradition, writes in the chapter "Social Promise and Social Reality':

The Nazis did not radically revise the taxation system so as to even up people's net incomes, for example, or control the economy in the way that was done in the Soviet Union, or later on in the German Democratic Republic, so as to minimise the differences between rich and poor. Rich and poor remained in the Third Reich, as much as they ever had.162

As shown in Section IV of this book, Hitler did indeed oppose the nationalisation of all means of production, although his views became more radical over time and he no longer ruled out the nationalisation of key sectors of the German economy after the war. An analysis of Hitler's statements concerning his post-war plans reveals that he intended to introduce changes to the economy that went far beyond what was actually implemented in the Third Reich.

The class struggle, however, was not to be overcome by eliminating all market mechanisms and abolishing the legal institution of private ownership of the means of production as in communist systems, but rather by increasing social mobility and improving opportunities for workers to move up the ranks. In this respect, it is entirely illegitimate to measure the extent to which the Third Reich fulfilled its social promises by comparing, whether implicitly or explicitly, the transformation of the economy under communist systems as a yardstick.



Recent Hitler Biographies: Kershaw, Ullrich, Longerich, Pyta and Simms

Are there really so many new insights into Hitler to report that a voluminous new biography is needed every few years? In 1998 and 2000, two volumes of a Hitler biography by Ian Kershaw weighing in at more than 2,300 pages were published; in 2003, Ralf-Georg Reuth published a 685-page biography; in 2013, Volker Ullrich published the first 1,088-page volume of a Hitler biography covering the years 1889-1939, followed just two years later by a 1,296-page Hitler biography from Peter Longerich; and then, in 2019, there followed another Hitler biography from Brendan Simms.

In a review of Longerich's biography in Die Zeit, Ulrich Herbert suggested that new Hitler biographies appear at such regular intervals because such portraits are easier to sell than analytical accounts of the history of the Third Reich. "And so, every few years another author will probably continue to delight us with a thick Hitler biography, just as every director wants to stage Faust. Or The Threepenny Opera,' writes Herbert.163 Although his point is not entirely unjustified, especially as the volume of new information contained in some Hitler biographies is indeed low, there are also a number of good reasons as to why new Hitler biographies are written with such unerring frequency.

Firstly, every Hitler biography, by its very nature, also provides an overall

assessment of the Third Reich. Despite all of the gaps in our knowledge, these 12 years are probably the most intensively researched period in world history. Every month, new and detailed studies are added - about the Third Reich's

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