Living With Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich by Eric Kurlander
Yale University Press, £25
Whatever happened to Germany’s liberals when Adolf Hitler rose to power? Unlike the socialists and communists, most escaped any form of persecution. Some, according to Professor Kurlander in this fascinating new study, actually experienced a “career renaissance”. The future President of the Federal Republic, Theodor Heuss, and Germany’s leading feminist Gertrud Baumer continued to edit learned journals and have their books and articles published. Weimar Democrat Hjalmar Schacht – who was subsequently acquitted at the Nuremberg trials despite having facilitated the expropriation of Jewish property – was appointed Hitler’s economics minister. Werner Stephen, one of the luminaries of German liberalism, became Josef Goebbels’ press attaché, while Rudolf Diels headed the Gestapo. Kurlander observes that liberal Germany played a major role in the demise of the Weimar Republic.