The Nazi Rise to Power and The Consolidation of Power, 1918-1938

Program Description:  This talk follows the cultural, economic, social and political impediments under which the Weimar Republic in Germany was born in 1918 and how the nearly constant assault of the conservative right wing upon a form of government it never accepted created opportunities for the extremist Nazi Party to take advantage of political paralysis, economic chaos, social panic and cultural despair to use democratic structures to come to power, establish a dictatorship, and increase popular support among Germans for the Nazi agenda.  It will focus on Nazi use of traditional, conservative, populist and nostalgic themes to present a palatable program for non-Nazi members of the upper and middle classes that cut across traditional cultural cleavages in Germany, including religion, region, social class, gender, age, the rural-urban divide and the military-civilian divide.   Key issues include revision of the post-World War I treaty system, destruction of the perceived leftist threat to Germany, stabilization of the economy, and restoration of self-esteem and solid German values to social and cultural life. Finally, it explores the Nazi presentation of WWII in terms that made it possible for non-Nazis to participate willingly in perpetrating Nazi crimes.

Bio:  Dr. Peter Black was the Senior Historian and Director of the Division of the Senior Historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from 1997 until his retirement from federal service in January 2016.  Previously, from 1978 until 1997, he served as a staff historian and (after 1986) as Chief Historian for the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice.  Since January 2016, he has been active as an independent historian/consultant, whose most important client is the USHMM, in particular the Division of the Reference Historian.

Educated at the University of Wisconsin (BA: 1972) and Columbia University (Ph.D in 1981), Dr. Black has held various teaching positions at George Mason University, Catholic University, American University and Columbia University.

Among other publications, he is the author of Ernst Kaltenbrunner:  Ideological Soldier of the Third Reich (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1984) as well as of many articles, including:  “Foot Soldiers of the Final Solution:  The Trawniki Training Camp and Operation Reinhard,” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 25, no. 1 (spring 2011), pp. 1-100; “SS-Gefolge als Akteure im nationalsozialistischen Zwangslagern und Tötungszentren des Generalgouverne-ments,” in Nationalsozialistische Zwangslager:  Strukturen und Regionen, Täter und Opfer, Wolfgang Benz et al., eds, (Berlin Metropol Verlag, 2011), pp. 207-239; “Askaris in the ‘Wild East’:  The Deployment of Auxiliaries and the Implementation of Nazi Racial Policy in Lublin District,” in The Germans and the East, Charles W. Ingrao and Franz A. J. Szabo, eds. (W. Lafayette, Indiana:  Purdue University Press, 2008), pp. 277-309; and--with Martin Gutman, “Racial Theory and Realities of Conquest in the Occupied East: The Nazi Leadership and Non-German Nationals in the SS and Police,” in Jochen Böhler et al., The Waffen SS:  A European History, (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 16-41; “Who Were the Trawniki Men?  Preliminary Data and Conclusions About the Foot Soldiers of Operation Reinhard,” in Collaboration in Eastern Europe During the Second World War and the Holocaust, Peter Black, Bela Rasky, and Marianne Windsperger, eds. (Vienna-Hamburg, 2019), pp. 21-65; and “Lease on Life:  How the Collapse of the Soviet Union Impacted U.S. Investigations of Trawniki-Trained Guards,” in Aftermath of the Holocaust and Genocides, Victoria Khiterer & Erin Magee, eds. (Newcastle upon Tyne, U. K.:  Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020), pp.57-103.