Peter Fritzsche

The breathtaking rise of Hitler in 1933-and the making of the Nazis Amid the ravages of economic depression, Germans in the early 1930s were pulled to political extremes both left and right. Then, in the spring of 1933, Germany turned itself inside out, from a deeply divided republic into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, award-winning historian Peter Fritzsche offers a probing account of the pivotal moments when the majority of Germans seemed, all at once, to join the Nazis to construct the Third Reich. Fritzsche examines the events of the period-the elections and mass arrests, the bonfires and gunfire, the patriotic rallies and anti-Jewish boycotts-to understand both the terrifying power the National Socialists exerted over ordinary Germans and the powerful appeal of the new era they promised. Hitler's First Hundred Days is the chilling story of the beginning of the end, when one hundred days inaugurated a new thousand-year Reich.

When Germans Embraced the Third Reich

Hitler's First Hundred Days

From a prize-winning historian, a vivid account of German-occupied Europe during World War II that reveals civilians’ struggle to understand

Europe Under Hitler

An Iron Wind

Examines the rise of National Socialism in Germany

Germans Into Nazis

Assistant Professor of History Peter Fritzsche

A scholar deciphers the puzzle of Nazism's ideological grip in a critical analysis that examines the efforts of Germans to adjust to new racial identities, to believe in the necessity of war, and to accept the dynamic of unconditional destruction.

Life and Death in the Third Reich

German Aviation and the Popular Imagination

A Nation of Fliers

Explains how history is traced by Europeans and Americans who had a passionate interest in the past, exploring how they saw themselves in the drama of history, from the aftermath of the French revolution, to the parlors of America's western territories.

Modern Time and the Melancholy of History

Stranded in the Present

A penetrating history of the year World War II became a global conflict and humankind confronted both destruction and deliverance on a planetary scale, “offering an intriguing perspective on a world at war” (Richard Overy, New York Times–bestselling author of Blood and Ruins) By the end of the Second World War, more than seventy million people across the globe had been killed, most of them civilians. Cities from Warsaw to Tokyo lay in ruins, and fully half of the world’s two billion people had been mobilized, enslaved, or displaced. In 1942, historian Peter Fritzsche offers a gripping, ground-level portrait of the decisive year when World War II escalated to global catastrophe. With the United States joining the fight following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, all the world’s great powers were at war. The debris of ships sunk by Nazi submarines littered US beaches, Germans marauded in North Africa, and the Japanese swept through the Pacific. Military battles from Singapore to Stalingrad riveted the world. But so, too, did dramas on the war’s home fronts: battles against colonial overlords, assaults on internal “enemies,” massive labor migrations, endless columns of refugees. With an eye for detail and an eye on the big story, Fritzsche takes us from shipyards on San Francisco Bay to townships in Johannesburg to street corners in Calcutta to reveal the moral and existential drama of a people’s war filled with promise and terror.

When World War II Engulfed the Globe

1942

A fresh interpretation of the role of the middle classes in the rise of the Nazis, this study traces the eclipse of the old moderate bourgeois parties by a new breed of radical populist politician, opposed not only to the Left but to big business, the Weimar state, and democracy itself.

Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany

Rehearsals for Fascism

Karen Hewitt

Suggests four walking tours of Berlin; describes historic sights, restaurants, and points of interest along each route; and includes advice on accommodations, entertainment, dining, and shopping

Berlinwalks/Four Intimate Walking Tours of Berlin's Most Historic Neighborhoods, With Maps, Photos, and a Select List of Restaurants, Hotels, and Mor

This unsettling and illuminating history reveals how Germany's fractured republic gave way to the Third Reich, from the formation of the Nazi party to the rise of Hitler. Amid the ravages of economic depression, Germans in the early 1930s were pulled to political extremes both left and right. Then, in the spring of 1933, Germany turned itself inside out, from a deeply divided republic into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, award-winning historian Peter Fritzsche offers a probing account of the pivotal moments when the majority of Germans seemed, all at once, to join the Nazis to construct the Third Reich. Fritzsche examines the events of the period -- the elections and mass arrests, the bonfires and gunfire, the patriotic rallies and anti-Jewish boycotts -- to understand both the terrifying power the National Socialists exerted over ordinary Germans and the powerful appeal of the new era they promised. Hitler's First Hundred Days is the chilling story of the beginning of the end, when one hundred days inaugurated a new thousand-year Reich.

Gigantic, fragile airships hovering in a vast sky, war aces obsessed with death and destruction, daring young men launching their handbuilt gliders, schoolchildren wearing gas masks during air-raid drills - the bright idealism of flight and its darker service in total war come to life in this book about Germany's perilous romance with aviation. From the Kaiser's Second Reich to Hitler's Third Reich, machine dreams mingled with imperial dreams and mastery over the natural world held the promise of mastery over the political world. This is popular history of the modern era.

A compact introduction to Nietzsche’s writings about God, language, truth, and myth, this collection will engage and appeal to both veteran and novice readers. Fritzsche’s insightful introduction presents valuable historical, biographical, and cultural guidelines for exploring Nietzsche’s ideas and influence, without ignoring his literary acumen. The samples of Nietzsche’s writing were carefully chosen to represent Nietzsche’s enduring relevance for contemporary life. With “the death of God” as his starting point, Fritzsche selected and translated documents from the full range of Nietzsche’s explosive writings to expose readers to key ideas he developed. His bold concepts ignited reactions in his time and continue to energize and shape worldviews. Selections include Nietzsche’s thoughts on such topics as how humans have fallen into a subordinate relationship with systems of morality of their own making, and the importance of recognizing new possibilities; how different cultures and languages enable unique interpretations—that is, there is no common or real world; and how the “slave mentality” of the West inclines people to see each other as victims instead of masters of their own lives. All of the documents feature notations about publication history and context for the readings that follow; gloss notes explain literary allusions, historical references, and unfamiliar terms; appendixes include a chronology of Nietzsche’s life, questions for consideration, and a bibliography of selected works by and about Nietzsche.

Selected Writings

Nietzsche and the Death of God

Franz Göll was a thoroughly typical Berliner. He worked as a clerk, sometimes as a postal employee, night watchman, or publisher's assistant. He enjoyed the movies, ate spice cake, wore a fedora, tamed sparrows, and drank beer or schnapps. He lived his entire life in a two-room apartment in Rote Insel, Berlin's famous working-class district. What makes Franz Göll different is that he left behind one of the most comprehensive diaries available from the maelstrom of twentieth-century German life. Deftly weaving in Göll’s voice from his diary entries, Fritzsche narrates the quest of an ordinary citizen to make sense of a violent and bewildering century. Peter Fritzsche paints a deeply affecting portrait of a self-educated man seized by an untamable impulse to record, who stayed put for nearly seventy years as history thundered around him. Determined to compose a “symphony” from the music of everyday life, Göll wrote of hungry winters during World War I, the bombing of Berlin, the rape of his neighbors by Russian soldiers in World War II, and the flexing of U.S. superpower during the Reagan years. In his early entries, Göll grappled with the intellectual shockwaves cast by Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, and later he struggled to engage with the strange lifestyles that marked Germany's transition to a fluid, dynamic, unmistakably modern society. With expert analysis, Fritzsche shows how one man's thoughts and desires can give poignant shape to the collective experience of twentieth-century life, registering its manifold shocks and rendering them legible.

An Ordinary Berliner Writes the Twentieth Century

The Turbulent World of Franz Göll

The story of how Germans came to embrace the Third Reich. Germany in early 1933 was a country ravaged by years of economic depression and increasingly polarized between the extremes of left and right. Over the spring of that year, Germany was transformed from a republic, albeit a seriously faltering one, into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, award-winning historian Peter Fritzsche examines the pivotal moments during this fateful period in which the Nazis apparently won over the majority of Germans to join them in their project to construct the Third Reich. Fritzsche scrutinizes the events of the period - the elections and mass arrests, the bonfires and gunfire, the patriotic rallies and anti-Jewish boycotts - to understand both the terrifying power that the National Socialists came to exert over ordinary Germans and the powerful appeal of the new era that they promised.

Peter (W. D. and Sara E. Trowbridge Professor Fritzsche, The University of Illinois at)

The chilling story of the hundred days in the spring of 1933 in which the Nazis laid the foundations for their Third Reich.

Peter Fritzsche

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