![]() ![]() The level of political culture in the Weimar Republic presents another, more indirect and more plausible connection between war veterans and the rise of National Socialism. Moreover, war veterans were supposed to have formed the core of the nsdap leadership and the backbone of the Nazi constituency after 1930. 3 It was assumed that they had joined the Freikorps in the period 1919 to 1923, thereby extending war methods and rhetoric into peacetime. ‘Disappointed’ and ‘brutalised’ veterans were thought to have been ‘confused, embittered, angry, hungry, and with no hope of pursuing military careers because of the limitations placed on the German army by the Treaty of Versailles’. By claiming that the German army had never been defeated in the field, but was ‘stabbed in the back’ 2 by democratic politicians and Socialist revolutionaries, right-wing propaganda allegedly turned many war veterans against the democratic system of the Weimar Republic. It was assumed that after the armistice of 1918, many of them encountered severe problems in reintegrating into society. ![]() Millions of German men served in the war. Although Adolf Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933 is no longer viewed as a logical consequence of political and cultural tendencies in German history since the nineteenth century and the authoritarian, undemocratic society structures of the German Empire (the Sonderweg thesis), the effects and consequences of the First World War are still taken into account as a major factor. It will be argued that the direct connection between the First World War and National Socialism can primarily be found in the continuity of public and cultural imagination of war and of ‘war veterans’ by representatives of the ‘war youth generation’, and much less so in actual membership overlaps between veterans’ and Nazi movements.Īccording to traditional assumptions in German historiography and the historiography of National Socialism in general, the experiences of German soldiers in the First World War, the revolutionary events and political instability after 1918, and the rise of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei are directly linked to each other. Contrary to common assumptions and approaches, according to which disappointed and politically radicalised war veterans formed the backbone of the Nazi membership and electorate, political activity of the actual veterans’ organisations must be distinguished from the narratives and collective memory put forward by the ‘war youth generation’. In this article, the connection between the First World War veterans and the rise of National Socialism in Germany will be scrutinised on the basis of recent historiography and insights in political culture. Keywords: Germany National Socialism veterans The direct connection between the First World War and National Socialism can therefore primarily be found in the continuity of public and cultural imagination of war and of ‘war veterans’, and much less so in actual membership overlaps between veterans’ and Nazi movements. ![]() Secondly, it is shown how representatives of this younger generation, lacking actual combat experience but moulded by war propaganda, determined the collective imagination of the First World War. Their definitions of ‘veteran’ and ‘front experience’ implicitly excluded the so-called ‘war youth generation’ from their narrative. Whereas the largest veterans’ organisations were not politically active, the most distinctive ones – Reichsbanner and Stahlhelm – were not primarily responsible for a ‘brutalisation’ or radicalisation of Weimar political culture. In questioning this view, the article first traces the political paths of actual veterans’ organisations. This article reconsiders traditional assumptions about the connection between the First World War and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, according to which politically radicalised war veterans joined the Freikorps after the war and formed the backbone of the Nazi membership and electorate.
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