Bidspirit auction | ”Hitler's Germany: The Nazi Background

”Hitler's Germany: The Nazi Background to the War” – an early publication exposing the brutal conduct of the Nazi state at the height of its power. New York, 1940 – second edition - ”Hitler’s Germany: The Nazi Background to War” by Karl Loewenstein – a German-Jewish jurist and politician who fled Nazi Germany to the United States, and was among the first to analyze the destructive internal structure of the Nazi regime. New York, 1940 – second edition, with additions not included in the first edition (published a year earlier in 1939), addressing developments since the outbreak of the war. The book analyzes the legal, constitutional, and political system of Germany under Hitler, explaining how the Third Reich turned the judiciary into a dictatorial instrument. The author, prior to 1938, was a leading attorney, educator, and well-known writer in the field of constitutional law in Germany. He utilized both official sources of the Third Reich and the vast body of anti-Nazi literature from the opposition within and outside Germany, in an effort to trace the rise of Hitler and the Nazi movement.  The author documents how Adolf Hitler succeeded in seizing power in Germany by taking control of the legal system and dismantling the opposition through totalitarian means, how he managed to embed racial ideology into a practical program, and how the system worked to persecute the Jews—beginning with the stripping of their social status, expropriation of their property, and eventual confinement in ghettos—without provoking any resistance from the persecuted population. He also provides a detailed account of the day-to-day workings of the Nazi regime: the dual nature of totalitarian control exercised by both the government and the party; how the Third Reich eliminated the private sphere and absorbed it into the state interest; the roles of the courts and the Gestapo as instruments of power; the army; racial doctrines and their implementation; the suppression of public and private life under the “service state.” The book vividly describes how businessmen, workers, farmers, and civil servants in Germany lived under a regime of efficient tyranny and gradually lost their freedoms, the indoctrination of Nazi education in German schools, and more. The author demonstrates how Nazism is far more a political religion with global implications than merely a form of government. According to the author in the preface to this edition, the events that unfolded during the first year of the war altered his interpretation of the facts presented in the book’s first edition. Initially, he believed the Allied powers would crush Nazi tyranny with a swift blow. However, the developments of the war led him to conclude that the dictatorship he had clearly identified knew no bounds—and was far more destructive than he had originally imagined. This is one of the earliest and most influential books written about Nazi Germany at the height of its power. It served as a foundational work for understanding the “destruction of democracy from within”—and was frequently cited after the war in discussions on denazification, international tribunals, and mechanisms for defending democracy (such as the concept of a “militant democracy”). XVII, 230 pages. Hardcover with original dust jacket. Minor tears to the lower portion of the dust jacket. The body of the book in very good condition.