Author Description

Drawing on Hitler's own description of his early membership in the Nazi Party, this paper argues for the usefulness of 'reason' and 'emotion' as conceptual tools in understanding how 'ordinary' Germans responded to the rise of Nazi Germany. Using specific case-studies of existing religious communities, it focuses on delineating methods of connection to the new state out of the complexity of the 'experience' of 1933. These groups form particularly useful examples given they held their own local and regional loyalties, as well as holding loyalties to the nation, their faith and the community of their faith. The paper concludes that the 'new Germany' (the Nazi state) was supported on the basis of what were seen as 'rational' grounds, but that the stronger attraction was the abstract and emotional connection of the local nation, whereby the supposed cohesive national community was represented at a local level as united, 'peaceful and secure'.