Soziologie des Nationalsozialismus

How could it happen that a highly developed modern nation like Germany allowed itself to be used by Hitler and his followers in the NSDAP for their barbaric goals and accepted the self-destruction of its own political, cultural and moral foundations? The experiences of war, persecution and terror continue to have an impact to this day and shape the conflicts between the generations. They form the indelible basis for ever new attempts to keep history alive in the collective memory.
M. Rainer Lepsius (1928–2014), the doyen of German post-war sociology, devoted numerous studies to the social preconditions that led to the emergence and rise of National Socialism. His lecture Sociology of National Socialism, held at the University of Mannheim in the 1980s, merges his relevant research into a major essay that combines the rigour of academic argumentation with the freshness of a lively narrative style – and is thus comparable to the legendary works of Sebastian Haffner and Hannah Arendt.