“One People, One Empire, One Leader”

“One People, One Empire, One Leader”—when in March 1938 the campaign for the “Annexation of Austria” was moving full speed ahead, this triad was heard again and again in the squares and markets. It linked the hope for social harmony with the desire for national strength and also made it clear that underneath the beautiful facade of the National Socialist people’s community lurked the brutal exclusion of everyone who couldn’t or didn’t want to belong. Racial inequality, according to this impressive overview, was the structural principle of German society in the Third Reich, the ever increasing state violence was the central pillar of the new political order, and a radical antisemitism was the fuel that kept the entire machine going. With virtuosity, Dietmar Süß weaves the concrete fates of individual people into his analysis and describes how the National Socialist regime fundamentally changed the lives of Germans. Dietmar Süß is a professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Augsburg.