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Coercion and Consent in Nazi Germany
Listen again to Professor Richard Evans's Raleigh Lecture held at the
British Academy on 24 May 2006
Richard Evans is a Fellow of the British Academy and
Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge
Professor Evans's lecture was a critique of the current orthodoxy
amongst historians that sees the Third Reich as a 'dictatorship by
consent', based on a 'self-policing society'. The lecture traced the
development of the historiography of policing and repression since
1945, and argued that while early work in this area over-emphasized the
totalitarian control exercised over German society in particular by the
Gestapo, recent work has trivialized and neglected the repressive side
of Nazism. It examined the various methods of control, from the legal
apparatus of courts, police and state prisons to low-level enforcement
agencies such as Block Wardens, which the Nazis used to repress and
deter dissent. The propaganda machinery of the Third Reich presented a
picture of unanimity and support for the regime among the people, but
the reality, it argued, was very different. Popular opinion was divided
and constantly in flux, and the lecture sketched the changing and
volatile movement of support, tolerance, distancing and dissent from
the regime amongst different groups of Germans on a variety of issues
over the period from 1933 to 1945, in order to provide a more
convincing account than recent work that has stressed the overwhelming
popularity of Nazism amongst the whole German people from start to
finish.
It is possible to listen again to selected Academy events via our
website: http://britac.studyserve.com/home/default.asp
The British Academy
10 Carlton House
London SW1Y 5AH
Tel: 020 7969 5200
Fax: 020 7969 5300
Web: www.britac.ac.uk
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