Nazi Germany and the Humanities

In 1933, Jews, and to a lesser extent, political opponents of the Nazis, suffered an unprecedented loss of positions and livelihood at Germany’s universities. Of the 1,700 faculty members who lost their jobs, eighty percent were removed on racial grounds. With few exceptions, the academic elite welcomed and justified the acts of the Nazi regime, uttered no word of protest when their Jewish and liberal colleagues were dismissed, and did not stir when Jewish students were barred admission. Why did the ‘Nazification’ of German universities encounter so little resistance? The subject of how German scholars responded to the Nazi regime has seen a resurgence of scholarship in recent years. In this collection, Rabinbach and Bialas bring some of the most important and original scholarly contributions together in one cohesive volume, to deliver a surprising conclusion: whatever diverse motives German intellectuals may have had in 1933, the image of Nazism as an alien power imposed on German universities from without was a convenient fiction.