A New Study of Nazism

...Except for a few endeavors explaining the operational aspects of Nazism (the works of Kogon and Poliakov are outstanding) , the literature is almost without any detailed analysis and description of the origins and ideological development of Nazism and the manner in which it was able to capture the minds and condition the reactions of the German people...

...He describes vividly the program as it was designed to play on those elements common to all national characters, but hyperactive in the German through deliberate cultivation...

...Haaland has produced a book which traces soberly the sordid story of German Nazism as it unfolded in 1933 until its near-demise in 1945...

...Using such types and explaining why they should be specially dominant in Germany and thus present a fertile field for exploitation means improperly dramatizing a supposed natural difference between Germans and other peoples...

...Haaland, working with funds from the Christian Michelsen Institute, undertook labors which have borne fruit in the form of the hook Nazism in Germany...

...The authors intention was not just another book to join those already legion on the more ordinary aspects of the "German question...

...A New Study of Nazism By Eugene Sekulow Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University Since the conclusion of hostilities in 1945, much ink has been used in an effort to recount the horrors unleashed on humanity by the nation which gave the world Goethe and Beethoven, Schiller and Schubert...

...Haaland suggests amendment is that attempting to explain a mass phenomenon like Nazism through the use as a reference point of a definite psychological type such as the schizophrenic or paranoiac...

...Of the more time-tested hypotheses among those of the social sciences, there are few which have withstood change...

...Haaland admits that ordinary insights into the basic assumptions and operation of Nazism produce no panaceas but merely the chance of understanding the disease...

...If the more aggressive attitudes receive more attention, it is not because they were simply more infamous or more widespread than others, but because they were centrally directed as an essential part of the Nazi movement...

...Emphasizing the fact that any nation, given the same combination of conditions at the same time, could have evolved in the same way, he examines the particular conditions in the light of the several theories of frustration and aggression first discussed by William Sheldon and Thorstein Veblen...

...Haaland suggests that there must be a system of education (relying on the schools, religion, recruit training), customs and usage in which natural tendencies are developed into national aggressiveness...

...Haaland is correct, a better understanding of how this was possible in Germany, and is still possible there or anywhere else, makes us better able to confront new movements which also pretend to have discovered the solution to the world's problems...

...In the annals of human history, there is no single more crucial mass phenomenon than Nazism...

...this was the major cause of the occurrence in Germany of that which did not develop elsewhere...

...Common to this entire background are the several types of frustration expression which have their origin in the most fundamental human mechanisms and predispositions...

...From this he arrives at the various types of Nazis and the several forms in which Nazism found expression...

...And he suggests further that, without that system, it would not have occurred even in Germany...

...His purpose can best be described as the utilization of that integrated method of which Karl Mannheim has been the prime exponent: that an encompassing social phenomenon is best illuminated through the use of techniques from closely related disciplines...

...Nevertheless, in the meantime it will have been useful to find the origin, and to contemplate the forms, of this movement which claimed to have discovered the solution to Europe's problems...

...In this he was eminently successful...

...With impressive accuracy...

...With the foregoing as background, Mr...

...That this claim was advanced is not nearly so unbelievable as that a cultured nation with a great and rich history could have swallowed such nonsense with such tragic results...

...Haaland devotes the major portion of his work to a factual account of the Nazi development of the consequent German disposition, and the manner in which it was given predetermined expression...

...Though in general terms he offers possible ways in which the desirable result of proper channeling of aggressiveness might be achieved, Mr...

...However, in the instance under consideration this natural desire to retaliate, which is common to all, was clearly exploited and transformed into an urge to aggressiveness...

...For one thing, the groups concerned in such an examination are so variable...

...It is not an historical account in the ordinary meaning of the term...

...This careful sowing of the seeds of Nazism in the fertile soil described could result only in a horrible harvest of hate...

...Arild Haaland, a Norwegian who has spent eight years in studying and writing about the subject, has just completed a pioneer sociological work on the background of German Nazism...

...And, if Mr...

...Historical materials were readily used, but as sources for a more sociological discussion...

...If some one of these factors is to be particularly significant, its meaning must come from the decided differences in emphasis with which the factor was nurtured in Germany...

...Even apologists have taken pen in hand to explain away that which the world found so hard to believe...

...While the desire to retaliate appears to be a natural reaction in most human associations, this desire is generally curtailed, and what might become widespread aggressiveness is modified, despite the numerous and frequent disappointments which life ordinarily brings...

...For another, the groups used as examples can have the most diversified origins...

...Consequently, the collected data on the subject can and do logically give rise to the most varied hypotheses...

...With amazing care and attention to detail, Mr...

...Yet, comparatively little has been written about that concept, Nazism, which was the cause of the agonies inflicted on mankind for twelve terrible years...

...Haaland discusses those fundamental characteristics common to all men but which had a development peculiar to Germany...

...Among these possibilities, the most unlikely is some innate urging to aggressiveness...

...In a carefully organized and well documented commentary, Mr...

...However, on this point our information is too deficient to allow for more than careless and superficial generalization...

...Similar hypotheses have been used in an attempt to account for most other factors in the growth of Nazism as peculiar to the German national character...

...Published in Norwegian, its greatest shortcoming will be its limited public...

...Clearly, the technique of reconstituting the German national character in the Nazi image was designed to utilize every elementary frustration, every natural ambivalence, every peculiar cultural pattern...

...In this description of the extent of Nazism in the personality, and the nucleus in the individual and in society on which such an ideology was able to thrive, the pioneer work of Hannah Arendt becomes apparent...

...In any case, for this difference to come about in a country, Mr...

...Haaland begins his discussion by stating the problem and by defining his conception of Nazism...

...A contemporary one for which Mr...