ABSTRACT
Grappling with the catastrophe of the Third Reich, German historians have looked everywhere for answers. Was the German family to blame (see Gay 1978, 4), with (according to one line of speculation) its authoritarian fathers? Did family structure, then, predispose citizens to submission to force? Were external events to blame? There was the calamitous defeat in War World I (lost, the generals lied, not on the front but at home: the infamous “stab in the back”). There were the putative terms of the Versailles Treaty. There was the fear (and manipulation of the fear) of the Bolshevik Revolution. From the outset there were enemies of the Republic, heartened by parliamentary gridlock, emboldened by runaway in ation, and nally provided their opportunity by the Great Depression.
