The capture of power by Hitler and the nazi movement in 1933 was one of the great turning-points in modern history. Yet its significance is usually seen to rest less upon what occurred in 1933 than upon what happened later. This article is an attempt to integrate the history of the nazi capture of power into what followed from it by examining four themes: war, racism, violence and order. Each of these themes was central to what happened in 1933. The first world war cast a long shadow over the politics of Weimar Germany, and this helped to create a climate conducive to nazism; racism inspired nazi activists and acceptance of racist assumptions was generally widespread; violence, both in word and deed, characterized nazi politics and helped the nazis to consolidate power rapidly in 1933; and a (misplaced) desire for order drove many Germans — among both the èlites and voters — into the arms of the nazis. Thus these broad themes, which frame the history of the Third Reich generally, also frame the history of the nazi capture of power.
The Cumberland Lodge Conference of May 1979 was clearly a milestone in the historiography of the "Third Reich."' As we know, the theme of the conference, "The National Socialist Regime and German Society," provided a platform for sharp disagreement about the place of Hitler in the decision-making processes of the Nazi regimedisagreement which Tim Mason memorably described as between "functionalists" and "intentionalists" examining the Nazi state, thus defining the terms of a debate which occupied a central place in textbooks for years thereafter. The question of whether one should regard the actions of the "National Socialist Regime" as the unfolding of the ideology and expressed intentions of its leadership (and of Hitler in particular), or whether one instead should focus on the dynamics of decision-making processes and the institutional pressures inherent in the Nazi system of government, seemed to dominate discussion of the Nazi state during the 1980s. Since that time, however, the battle lines have become rather blurred. Already in the first edition of his reasoned and judicious assessment of the historiography, published in 1985, Ian Kershaw concluded that "'Intention' and 'structure' are both essential elements of an explanation of the Third Reich, and need synthesis rather than to be set in opposition to each other."2 It would seem that in the intervening years Kershaw's sober judgment has been accepted, as serious historians of Nazi Germany, and not least the historians who since 1979 have done pathbreaking research on the murder of Europe's Jews, have come to doubt the importance of neither the orders given by the Nazi leadership nor the institutional context in which these orders were given and carried out. The battle cry sounded at Cumberland Lodge now seems past history; in the twenty-three years since the Cumberland Lodge conference and the twenty years since the publication of Der "Fiihrerstaat": Mythos und Realitit, the historical landscape has altered considerably. We now know vastly more than we did two decades ago about how the National Socialist
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