ABSTRACT
This chapter offers the concept of ‘instrumental nationalism’ as an alternative to national indifference. Karch analyzes the interaction in Upper Silesia between increasingly radical activists who sought to impose singular national loyalties using illiberal means and local citizens who resisted such demands from the 1920s through the 1940s. These locals maintained an instrumentally rational (zweckrational) view toward the nation, in contrast to the value rational (wertrational) choices of German and Polish nationalists. These concepts, taken from Max Weber, lay out a stark contrast: whereas activists embraced national ends nearly regardless of the means, many local Upper Silesians weighed national loyalty against the personal consequences of belonging and against other loyalties: to church, family, locality, or region. Karch demonstrates that national ambiguity was an equally rational personal choice (in some cases more rational) than full-on embrace of a nation.
