The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 by Michael Burleigh

The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 Reviews

• 
  Lewis Weinstein

  Demonstrates clearly that Hitler's objective of eliminating the Jews from Germany was central to his thinking from the very beginning. He believed that Germany could not be great so long as Jews were present. No German or anyone else should be allowed to say they didn't understand what he would do if he had the power.
• 
  Katherine Addison

  This is dry and slow going, but a fascinating read. It's an examination of Nazi social policy through the lens of their crazy racist ideology. The authors get points for putting words like "Aryan" and "gypsy" in quotation marks every single time and for their refreshingly dour assessment of some of their more out-there colleagues. They are less interested in the concentration camps themselves than in how people got sent to the concentration camps: how you got judged to be "asocial," for instance. They also talk a good deal about the "euthanasia" program and compulsory sterilization and the ways in which seemingly "progressive" policies were actually nothing of the sort. The Nazis didn't have services for single mothers because they supported the rights of women to make choices about their own bodies. They supported "Aryan" single mothers whose babies had "Aryan" fathers, because they were obsessed with the need to produce more "Aryan" babies. If you had the great misfortune to be a Polish single mother in Germany, odds were very good that you'd end up in a detention camp and your baby would end up either taken away from you to be put in a good German home (if deemed, in the immediate aftermath of its birth to be "Aryan" enough) or dead (if deemed not).
  
  They also talk about "resistance" and whether there was or wasn't any in various sectors of the German population. Mostly there wasn't (they find before Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and in much less dramatic language); people agreed with the Nazis' racist ideas or didn't disagree or were interested either in self-advancement or self-protection. There are a number of reasons that all come down to the same thing: active or passive support of the Nazi regime. Resistance in Germany was fragmentary, disorganized, and of course ruthlessly destroyed when discovered (including the Nazi habit of killing the families of those they apprehended).
  
  Reading about the Nazis is always horrifying and fascinating in somewhat equal measures, and this book is no exception.
• 
  Jo Ann

  I found this to be an excellent study of the various racial policies of the Nazis. Not only the treatment of the Jews is covered, but also that of the homosexuals, Sinti, Roma, "hereditary ill," and "asocial." However, his thesis that Hitler's regime was only created to implement a racial state may be debated by some.
• 
  Siria

  An overview of the history of Nazi racial ideology and how it was translated into the laws which systematically discriminated against all those who were not properly 'Aryan'—including Jews, Roma, Sinti, the disabled, homosexuals and Communists. It's useful for its broad overview of the era and for its reproduction of some primary documents; I think I found its methodology a little shaky however, and wasn't so keen on its emphasis on racial concerns as the only driver of the government of the Reich, ignoring gender and class based concerns. It conflates a little too much, and isn't good on distinguishing between the kinds of persecution which the Nazis inflicted on their victims—what happened to the Jews was not what happened to the Roma, and I don't think this book quite makes that clear.
• 
  Will

  Really interesting book, the ideas of which I felt compelled to discuss with my friends. The central premise is that Germany under National Socialism was a racial, not a class-based state, and that this formed the bedrock of all the government's social policies, even those which appear progressive or 'modern'.
  
  5 Interesting quotes:
  
  1. “Nazi racial and social policy must be studied as an indivisible whole… Nazi racial and social policy was simultaneously modern and profoundly anti-modern.” (4)
  
  2. “While Stalin… at least propagated the idea of a classless society, Hitler thought to translate a fundamentally inhuman racial ideology into reality.” (16)
  
  3. German racism “represented a rejection of French claims to cultural and political hegemony. According to Arndt, Fichte, Jahn, and other national ideologists, the Germanic peoples were superior to the Latin French in corporal structure, beauty, bravery, and love of freedom.” (25)
  
  4. “In both Mein Kampf and subsequent speeches and writings, Hitler recommended a number of measures, which some historians have mistakenly regarded as ‘modern’ or even ‘social revolutionary’… In reality, all of these projected measures were motivated by racial considerations, firstly, because both ‘alien races’ and the ‘less valuable elements’ of the German population were excluded from the benefits of Nazi ‘social policy’, and secondly, because all of these social ‘improvements’ were designed to encourage the reproduction of certain types of people.” (39)
  
  5. “Imprisoned in the little worlds of their laboratories, libraries and institutes, and captive to professional hierarchies, careerism, the quest for ‘fame’, and petty professional animosities, many of these professionals failed to see the barbaric and inhuman goals which their research served… Contrary to the notion that Nazism somehow corrupted and distorted the temples of learning- which of course it did- one could argue that a corrupt and inherently distorted science leant Nazism a specifically ‘academic’ and ‘scientific’ character.” (56)
  
  6. “The main object of social policy remained the creation of a hierarchical racial new order. Everything else was subordinate to this goal, including the regime’s conduct of foreign affairs and the war. In the eyes of the regime’s racial politics, the Second World War was above all a racial war, to be pursued with immense brutality until the end.” (306)
• 
  Debbie

  At the time it was written, the book provided a new analysis looking at Nazi ideology in its historic context and in its operation. Seeing Nazi race ideology as the key driver to Nazi actions, it considers how Nazism can be defined, whether it is modern or reactionary, and whether it results from some sort of Sonderweg. Although generally well written and accessible, and probably still a must for anyone writing a historiographical essay, it is now dated: much of academia has moved on and theories - and debate - have changed. In addition, it is written in very heavily loaded emotive language: the Nazis can't be mentioned unless somewhere in the sentence words like 'horrible', 'barbaric', 'murderous', etc, etc, are used. Of course Nazism was foul, but it is unnecessary - and unhelpful - to be so subjective in what is otherwise a serious work of scholarship.
• 
  IWB

  From its inception in 1933 to its demise in 1945, Germany’s Nazi regime undertook a systematic restructuring of society based on racial criteria. Burleigh and Wippermann’s book, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, is the authors’ examination of this Nazi racial project. Relying mostly on secondary literature, the authors analyze the ideology of this engineering project, the policies of the project, and the institutions that executed those policies. The distinctive mark of this examination is the authors’ claim that Nazi racial policy was immediately and deliberately set out to “create a utopian society organized in accordance with the principles of race.”
  
  The authors reveal the ways in which these policies victimized the Jews, Roma, and Sinti, as well as certain groups of the German people themselves; namely, homosexuals and effeminates, malcontents and criminals, and the mentally and physically disabled. With respect to the general population of ordinary German citizens, the authors include chapters on women, children, and men in the Third Reich. In these chapters, which are punctuated by a number of chilling primary source accounts, the authors describe the Regime’s treatment of the ordinary German citizen and the intended benefits of Nazi racial and social policies toward them. In short, the book is a robust account of the Nazis’ racial ideology, its application, and its victims.
  
  The authors have two distinct argumentative goals in this book, one prescriptive and one descriptive. The latter goal is an historical argument showing that the Third Reich was a unique phenomenon even among other totalitarian regimes that implemented racial policies. The authors argue that this uniqueness is not located in the nature of Nazi fascism or totalitarianism itself, but in the all-encompassing nature of Nazi racial policies and the ideology from which they were derived. The former goal is an historiographical argument intended to counteract, what the authors perceive as, various attempts to couch the topic of Nazi atrocities in relativistic, morally neutral, and politically expedient terms. They intend this counteraction to do two things. First, to refute claims that Nazi atrocities are just analogs to those perpetrated by other totalitarian regimes. The authors argue that such comparisons are false analogies. Second, to bring to the forefront of the reader’s mind the unique horrors of the Third Reich; namely, the fact that Nazi Germany undertook the systematic, efficient, industrialized murder of millions of Jews, Sinti, and Roma, and other “undesirables," all of which were thought to be of “lesser racial value.”
  
  The historiographical argument begins with a survey of various controversies in German history, from the 1920’s to the time of writing, related to modernism, totalitarianism, fascism, and Nazism. They reject those views in which Nazism is just another banal expression of fascism in general; similarly, they reject those views in which Nazi fascism is a mere expression of totalitarianism. The most salient part of the authors’ argument here is the unequivocal rejection of arguments that purport to show that the Nazi regime was a modern one; hence, the authors also reject corollary arguments that attribute a modernizing role to the Nazi regime’s overall place in European history. At most, Burleigh and Wippermann are willing to concede that any modernizing role that Nazism may have had in European culture with respect to some social policies (e.g., various welfare and labor benefits) was entirely accidental. This follows, so the authors’ think, because the ultimate goal for Nazi policies was not aimed at the benefit of certain groups of people, but aimed at “a global remodeling of society in accordance with racial criteria,” resulting in the recovery of the pure Aryan Germanic race, and culminating in a pure Aryan national community. Burleigh and Wippermann think that the modern methods the Reich used to carry out their programs of ethnic cleansing and racial extermination are reactionary in nature, but not necessarily modernizing. This leads them to claim that “Nazi racial and social policy must be studied as an indivisible whole,” and that “both were…two sides of the same coin. Nazi racial and social policy was simultaneously modern and profoundly anti-modern.”
  
  The historical argument begins with a survey of nineteenth century racial ideology in Germany, much of which was later adopted and refined by the Nazi Party, especially racial-hygienic theories and Social Darwinism. The authors then go on to detail the Reich’s racial ideology, policies, and the various ways in which these policies were implemented. In doing so, they show that Nazi racial policies not only were applied negatively against those deemed racially inferior, but also positively for the betterment of racially pure Aryans.
  
  There are a number problems with their argument; however, I will merely allude to one of them rather than spelling them out in any detail. For instance, they authors claim that the uniqueness of Nazi Germany is not located in the nature of Nazi fascism or totalitarianism itself, but in the all-encompassing nature of Nazi racial policies and the ideology from which they were derived. But this presupposes that there is a distinction between Nazi fascism or Nazi totalitarianism, and the all-encompassing nature of Nazi racial policies. This presupposition is problematic. The authors do not make an argument for this distinction; moreover, they do not even suggest what Nazi fascism divorced from an all-encompassing racial policy might look like.
  
  This is a very interesting and informative book regardless of anything with which one might disagree.
• 
  Sergio Escario

  Se trata de un magnífico estudio por parte de Michael Burleigh de la naturaleza racial del régimen nazi. Me atrevería a decir que es una obra imprescindible para aquél estudioso del nazismo, pues en este libro se encuentran todo tipo de detalles, pues explora el racismo abocado hacia todos aquellos colectivos que fueron coaccionados a lo largo del régimen (1933-1945), desde los judíos, los homosexuales y los gitanos hasta los discapacitados. Además de albergar cifras y fechas, también se detallan los acontecimientos que llevaron a los nazis a acometer las fechorías que muchas personas conocemos. Imprescindible.
• 
  Somer Schaffer

  Very interesting read. Easy to comprehend while also going in depth. Love the pictures throughout. :)
• 
  Justin Rose

  The authors' premise that the objective of Third Reich was to change the class structure of Germany from socially based to racially based is convincing. The Racial State succeeds in persuading readers of this with ample historical examples and references.
  Unfortunately this book misses so many opportunities to discover how Germany came to the place where it was willing to try a new social structure. For example, Theodor Hertzl is not even mentioned, but the Aryan Germans must have felt some malevolence toward the Zionist movement which wished to strip Europe of many of its top scientists, educators, and bankers to form an Israeli state elsewhere. (Ironically, the Zionists and the Nazis had the same agenda--to get Jews to emigrate out of Germany to Palestine or Madagascar.)
  The Racial State brushes over how the Germans must have felt antagonized by a largely urban Jewish population. An example of this occurs on page 78, where the German boycott of Jewish businesses starting 1 April 1933 is talked about, but Judaism's boycott of German goods announced earlier in March 1933 is ignored.
  Finally, this book does contain several gems spread throughout for understanding Germany as a racial state.
• 
  Brad Hart

  A very eye-opening book. The author is a bit wordy, but it is worth it.
• 
  Inknscroll

  This book was recommended in one of the "Bookmarks" magazine's issues of either: (Nov/ Dec 2007) or (Jan/ Feb 2008).