Inside Nazi Germany - J.K. Peukent

- It is through looking at the ordinary people in history that we see that the stereotypes of 'evil' fascism and 'good' anti-fascism dissolve.

- The fascist phenomenon should be incorporated within a critical history of modernity.

- Link between normality, modernity and fascist barbarism in differing historical accounts.

- A decent survey of fascism must acknowledge the confrontations of the present day.

- By looking at fascism from an everyday perspective it is possible to understand Nazi terrorism more fully, and why it was tolerated, to determine where resistance was actually possible, to see the sources of the regimes support, to understand the growing readiness to criticize the regime, to see the lines of development of industrial society in order to locate the Third Reich more precisely and to understand better their generation.

- The mode of life for an individual was moulded by the demands made by the Nazi authorities.

- History of everyday life only rarely reflected in accounts. The many-faceted nature of everyday life in the Third Reich makes the task of marshalling the data difficult.

- Example – burning of books – we are not given the effect this had on reading as a leisure activity afterwards.

- Everyday life under Hitler cannot be seen to be mere conformity on one hand, or mere loss of rights and freedoms on the other. The appeal to everyday experience is not of itself sufficient.

- National Socialism was unable to abolish the reality of industrial society. Through terror it largely prevented its victims from organizing themselves.

- Nazism claimed to offer the solution to the challenges and discomfort of the age. Aim of Nazism was for the individual to feel secure within a disciplined, militarized environment.

- The elites took over and institutionalized the movements terrorist dynamism in order to retain and extend their own power.

- Something approaching consent on an everyday level emerged as far as the majority of the population was concerned. Active resistance was only a minority affair. Rebels went through cycle of “refusal, protest and resistance”.

- A more “modern” society emerged from the ruins of the Third Reich at the end of the war.

- Nazi aim to create a “national community” – homogeneous society. It was an aimless rebellion against the thrust towards modernization.