Language:
English
Year of publication:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
American Behavioral Scientist
Angaben zur Quelle:
41,9 (1998) 1324-1362
Keywords:
Fromm, Erich,
;
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah.
;
Antisemitism History 1918-1933
;
Antisemitism History 1933-1945
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
National socialism Philosophy
Abstract:
Erich Fromm's "Arbeiter und Angestellte am Vorabend des Dritten Reiches" (first published in German in 1980 and in English in 1984) was the initial survey in the research program that culminated in "The Authoritarian Personality" by Adorno et al. Based on replies to a questionnaire, the study indicated that many German workers in 1929-30 were not antisemitic. Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners" finds a high level of antisemitism among ordinary Germans, including the working class. To resolve the apparent contradiction in these works, Smith undertook to study the process of nazification of the German public by estimating the changing relative levels of antisemitism prior to Hitler's gaining power, describing how Hitler attained power, and explicating how antisemitism and social influence facilitated the perpetrators' killing of Jews. By 1941 many Germans had internalized the Nazi worldview, of which eliminationist antisemitism was an intrinsic component. Shows that, in addition to any hypothetical, historical prejudices, the Nazis' threat of coercion, the public's perceptions of the regime's economic and international achievements, and antisemitic propaganda all influenced the Germans' manifest levels of antisemitism and Nazism.
DOI:
10.1177/0002764298041009009
URL:
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