Introduction

During the late 1970s and 1980s a number of books appeared, bearing titles ‘the state and…’, giving force to Gluck’s statement that ‘the protagonist of prewar history still remains the state’. It is to shift the primary focus of attention from the state that ‘society’ has deliberately been placed before ‘state’ in the title of this book. And it was a desire to provide some depth and insights into the neglected social history of the prewar decades that inspired this collaborative effort.