Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism

by Paul Corner

Overview

Fascism, Nazism, and Communism dominated the history of much of the twentieth century, yet comparatively little attention has focused on popular reactions to the regimes that sprang from these ideologies. Popular Opinion in Totalitarian Regimes is the first volume to investigate popular reactions to totalitarian rule in the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the communist regimes in Poland and East Germany after 1945.

The contributions, written by internationally acknowledged experts in their fields, move beyond the rather static vision provided by traditional themes of consent and coercion to construct a more nuanced picture of everyday life in the various regimes. The book provides many new insights into the ways totalitarian regimes functioned and the reasons for their decline, encouraging comparisons between the different regimes and stimulating re-evaluation of long-established positions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199566525
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/30/2009
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paul Corner is Professor of European History at the University of Siena, having previously been a Research Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and Reader in Italian History at the University of Reading. His main interests are in Italian Fascism and the relationship between Fascism and other European dictatorial regimes both before and after the Second World War.

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors ix

Abbreviations x

1 Introduction Paul Corner 1

Part 1 Two Overviews

2 Popular Opinion in Russia Under Pre-war Stalinism Sheila Fitzpatrick 17

3 Consensus, Coercion and Popular Opinion in the Third Reich: Some Reflections Ian Kershaw 33

Part 2 The First Dictatorships

4 Liberation from Autonomy: Mapping Self-Understandings in Stalin's Time Jochen Hellbeck 49

5 Beyond Binaries: Popular Opinion in Stalinism Jan Plamper 64

6 Popular Opinion in Nazi Germany as a Factor in the Policy of the 'Solution of the Jewish Question': The Nuremberg Laws and the Reichskristallnacht Otto Dov Kulka 81

7 Popular Opinion in Nazi Germany: Mobilization, Experience, Perceptions: The View from the Württemberg Countryside Jill Stephenson 107

8 Fascist Italy in the 1930s: Popular Opinion in the Provinces Paul Corner 122

Part 3 Dictatorship After 1945

9 Poland: The Silence of Those Deprived of Voice Marcin Kula 149

10 Consent in the Communist GDR or How to Interpret Lion Feuchtwanger's Blindness in Moscow 1937 Martin Sabrow 168

11 Demography, Opportunity or Ideological Conversion? Reflections on the Role of the 'Second Hitler Youth Generation', or '1929ers', in the GDR Mary Fulbrook 184

12 Tacit Minimal Consensus: The Always Precarious East German Dictatorship Thomas Lindenberger 208

Select Bibiliography 223

Index 227