Stokes, Lawrence D.

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

COMPTES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 399amulets, fetishes and feeders to modern toys, toothbrushes and tongue scrapers. Whilethe ancient artifacts are illuminating, and serve to remind us that child care is thebusiness of every age, the chief interest of the collection lies in the objects andtreatises dating from the early modern European period, the sixteenth to the earlynineteenth centuries.For most of us, the artifacts and the writings require interpretation. They belongto a bygone way of thinking about child-rearing and health care. Who in our day cansympathize with procedures such as rubbing newborn babies with salt, or wrappingthem from head to toe in swaddling doths, or dipping them in the cold waters of thenearest river, or, in case of illness, purging, even bleeding them? Or the most deadlyof all practices, the putting out of infants to wet nurses? Yet such things cannot hedismissed, much less condemned, out of hand; they must be understood, and thisunderstanding can he achieved only within the context of their own times.The value to the public of Dr Drake's collection has been greatly enhanced bythe appearance of the companion book, Nurturing Yesterday's Child. As the prefaceto the book explains, the text does not daim to he a comprehensive history of childcare. It is guided by the contents of the collection. The artifacts and prints themselvesfall into different groupings, following the original interests of the collector. Bachgrouping forms its own chapter: on maternal, "wet", and "dry" nursing; on the care offoundlings; on the raising and education ofchildren; on the nursing, bleeding, purgingand dosing of invalids; on magic medicine; on touching for the King's Evil. Everychapter is accompanied by illustrations taken from the collection. But the readerrecognizes that the usual procedure is here reversed: the real illustrating is done bywords, for the purpose ofbetter understanding the pictures. The authors have achieveda solid work of information and interpretation within a highly readable text.For those interested in the subject of yesterday's children, a visit to the Drakecollection would he rime well spent Whether or not they visit the collection. this bookwillleave their minds informed and their imaginations enriched.Elizabeth RapleyUniversity ofOttawa***Walter Struve -Aufstieg undHerrschaft des Nationalsozialismus in einer industriel-lenKleinstadt. Osterode am Harz 1918-1945. Essen: Klartext Verlag.1992. pp. 634.Since the 1965 publication of William S. Allen's pioneering study of Northeim(a substantially expanded edition of which appeared in 1984) and especially in thewake of a burgeoning interest in Alltagsgeschichte, or the history of everyday life,during the 1980s, the archives and citizenry ofGerman towns and villages have beeninundated by researchers, amateurs and professionals alike. Among the latter,English-speaking historians - often with a familial connection to the locality theychose to examine - have made significant contributions to what bas been thepre-eminent subject of this scholarship: namely, the rise, rule, and (to a lesser extent)aftermath ofNational Socialism at the grassroots level. Walter Struve, who teaches atthe City University of New York and whose grandfather was born in Osterode, hasnow presented the fruits of a decade and a half of investigating that small industrial400 mSTOIRE SOCIALE - SOCIAL mSTORYcenter (its population did not exceed 10,(00) in the Harz mountain region,100 kilometres southeast of Hanover, between the world wars. Not only hisconclusions but also his modus operandi are certain to modify our understanding ofthe Hitler era and how best to approach studying il.First of all, the book is informed by a wide-ranging familiarity with the generalliterature on Nazism. This enables the author constantly to relate developments in thetown to those of many other communities in Germany as weIl as the broader nationalpolity, thereby avoiding the sterile antiquarlanism characteristics of sorne products ofAlltagsgeschichte. Struve argues, for example, that although the assomption of powerin Osterode by the NSDAP and the policies of the dictatorship it established resultedfrom the effective interaction ofindigenous with extemal forces such as the provincialParty headquarters and subsequently Hitler's govemment in Berlin, the "decisiveimpetus" nevertheless came from "above" (520). This interpretation contradicts,among other things, the view that local units of the Nazi movement were self-financedrather than the recipients, whether directly or otherwise, of the Party's materialsupport from "big business" which Osterode lacked. It explains, too, why anti-Semitism, though scarcely an issue during the numerous election campaigns before1933 in a town with only about 50 Jews (slightly below the average proportion for thecountry as a whole), still ended up claiming more than one-third of them in theHolocausl.Besides exhausting the rich resources of Osterode's city, county, church, andcourt records along with relevant archival holdings in a dozen other locations betweenBerlin and London, Struve conducted around 100 taped interviews or correspondedwith present and former residents of the town, sorne living as far afield as Britain andthe V.S. His study is a particularly persuasive illustration of the irreplaceable value oforal testimony in uncovering the experiences of Germans under Nazism, an historicalphenomenon more hedevilled than most with memory "losses" and distortions. Thetext abounds in telling quotations from participants in the events described, many notyet adults at the time; indeed, severa! topics, including the fate of the regime's racialand other victims, could hardly he delineated as extensively as they are without thisfast disappearlng type of evidence. The author shows himself weIl aware of thepotentially apologetic nature oforal sources, as he is of similar pitfalls associated withpostwar denazification fIles (popularly called "whitewash affidavits") upon which hebas also drawn. A few readers may nonetheless question his acceptance of statementsby contemporaries that they objected - alheit as a mIe silently - to Nazi mistreat-ment of foreign labourers and concentration camp inmates slaving (the word does notseem inappropriate as Struve claims on p. 466) in Osterode's numerous wartimearmament factories. Much contrary documentation, which he by no means neglects topresent, from there and elsewhere maintains that precisely German workers whoseown political parties and unions were the frrst objects of Nazi repression were all tooprone to inflict their ethnic prejudices upon these later persecutees.This points to perhaps the most controversial theme the author raises. What roledid the working class play in the Nazi period and its origins? Struve asserts -correctly, in my opinion - that the NSDAP represented the ultimate weapon utilizedby the German bourgeoisie to repulse the claim of the nation's proletariat to politicaland moral equality with il Thus, workers were always underrepresented among earlymembers of and voters for the Party. Soon after Hitler became chancellor,Communists and Social Democrats were purged from all positions of govemmentaland administrative responsibility; while any sign of dissent emanating fromCOMPTES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 401predominantly working-class groups, for instance Jehovah's Witnesses, wasvigorously suppressed. However, the argument about the greater or lesser share of"workers" among adherents of Nazism toms, in part, upon one's narrower or elsemore inclusive definition of the term; and, in this case, on the occupational structureof the community being investigated. Osterode counted a large blue-collar element(but few Catholics), and was correspondingly slower to accord the NSDAPa majoritythan a predominantly Protestant civil service or upper middle-class elec10rate wouldhave done. Suffice it 10 say that the author's frequently reiterated thesis of the relativeimmunity of workers per se to the appeal of Nazi ideology is not always persuasive:the minuscule number and dogmatic fanaticism of the Witnesses probably accountsat least as much as their social origins for their systematic persecution by the Gestapo.Notwithstanding this interpretative disagreement, the chapter on the sect, whichhappened 10 have a disproportionately numerous following in Osterode, is one of thebook's most original.It also includes, among many other highlights, a lengthy socio-economic his10ryof the town's Jewish populace stretching from their medieval background to theirgradual expropriation in the course of the thirties; and a revealing exposure of themilitary-industrial complex that emerged in Osterode after 1942 10 prop up theGerman war effort - a prime example of the exploitation by rapacious capitalism ofthe opportunities for profit offered by the Third Reich. On the other band, thedisappointingly sketchy treatment ofOsterode's educational institutions focuses uponpersonnel changes in 1933, but says nothing about the function of the schools inindoctrinating their pupils for democracy, or fascism. The fmal narrative chapter onthe 1own's capture by advancing American troops in April 1945 seems intendedmainly to satisfy the otherwise unexceptionable right of local his10ry as well 10 bewritten for its own sake (26). Much detail in it, however, could he trimmed from avery desirable English version of the book. Not so the appendix of45 statistical tableswhich clearly outline the results of each election held in Osterode from 1912 until1934; the same applies 10 the fme selection of pho1ographs of the town and its chiefpersonalities, although the portfolio could be placed in a more logicallocation than(apparently) just dropped into the middle of a chapter. Last but not least, and by nomeans 10 be taken for granted in a book published in Germany, Professor Struve basprovided an adequate index. AlI in all, this volume amply attests 10 the value ofapplying the his1oriographical knowledge, resourceful imagination, and analyticalskill of a fust-rate practitioner "even" 10 the tale of an obscure German Kleinstadt.Lawrence D. StokesDalhousie University***Whitney Wal10n - France at the Crystal Palace. Bourgeois Taste and ArtisanManufacture in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press,1992. pp. xii, 240.Whitney Wal10n uses the French experience at The Great Exhibition of theWorks oflndustry ofAH Nations, held in London in 1851 and universally known thenand since as the Crystal Palace Exhibition, 10 focus her exploration of the taste andconsomption patterns of the French bourgeoisie in the frrst half of the nineteenth

Walter Struve - Aufstieg und Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus in
einer industriellen Kleinstadt. Osterode am Harz 1918-1945

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/16530/15389

Walter Struve - Aufstieg und Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus in einer industriellen Kleinstadt. Osterode am Harz 1918-1945

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)