“Between Detroit and Moscow”: A Left Liberal “Third Way” in the Third Reich

摘要

THE nature and intentions of Nazi economic policy are once again beingrnhotly contested, although on a new set of terms.rn1 No longer is thernGerman bourgeoisie’s complicity in the Nazi “seizure of power” or therncapitalist underpinnings of Hitler’s subsequent aggressions at the center of the dis-rncussion.rn2 Rather, recent scholarship has chosen to grapplemore carefully with therndynamic interplay between economics, race, and social policy in the ThirdrnReich.rn3 As David Schoenbaum contended forty years ago, the Third Reich’srnapotheosization of “national community [Volksgemeinschaft]” led to an array ofrnwelfare programs, educational reforms, and “meritocratic” values that may infact have produced a modern “social revolution.”4 To be sure, a number of sub-rnsequent studies have highlighted longer-term continuities, suggesting that thernNazi Sozialstaat was indebted in some part to the legacy of the WeimarrnRepublic and in other respects presaged the social policies of the FederalrnRepublic of Germany (FRG).rn5 Historians likewise continue to debate the relativernimprovement in living standards experienced by the average German underrnHitler. Virtually all scholars agree, however, that, regardless of its efficacy, thernunderpinnings of Nazi social policy are to be located in the Third Reich’srndrive to construct a racial utopia at home while securing popular support forrnwars of conquest abroad.rn6