What is it about?
This article reconsiders traditional assumptions about the connection between the First World War and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, according to which politically radicalised war veterans joined the Freikorps after the war and formed the backbone of the Nazi membership and electorate. It is argued that the direct connection between the First World War and National Socialism can primarily be found in the continuity of public and cultural imagination of war and of ‘war veterans’, and much less so in actual membership overlaps between veterans’ and Nazi movements.
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Why is it important?
The article deconstructs the common misunderstanding that Germany's "disoriented World War I veterans" were somehow connected to the emergence of National Socialism in Germany. Rather, the continuity has to be explained in terms of a generational hiatus, with a prominent role for the so-called 'victory watchers' of the war youth generation.
Perspectives
The article presents another perspective and insight in the history of National Socialism in Germany and its connection to the First World War and war veterans. Although it is only one other interpretation, it advises historians of fascism or the interwar period not to follow existing clichés of an logical continuity between war veterans and fascism for the German case, and provides reasons and material for this.
Dr Kristian M. Mennen
Freie Universitat Berlin
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘Milksops’ and ‘Bemedalled Old Men’: War Veterans and the War Youth Generation in the Weimar Republic, Fascism, June 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/22116257-00601002.
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