Annotated Bibliography – Declan Renton

I have not decided on my exact dissertation question as I’m unsure if I want to do a comparison or focus solely on the study of Weimar paramilitary groups. However, the sources I have began to study are as follows;

 

  • Siemens, Daniel. Stormtroopers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

I found this book on the DiscoveryEd. This book discusses the history of the SA and how the Nazi Party used them to gain and stay in power. This book will be useful for my dissertation to determine how they were used during the Weimar Republic and what forms of violence this group performed.

 

  • Rosenshaft, Eve. Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929–1933. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1983. 

This book is made available free online via a pdf. This book discusses the communist and left paramilitaries within the late Weimar Republic. It looks at how they combated the Nazi’s ascent to power and how discusses constant struggle against the SA.  This will be useful as it further examines the violence that was caused by paramilitaries in interwar Germany. It also gives a perception of what were the motivations for violence within the left of German politics.

 

  • Bielanski, David James. Front Line Weimar: Paramilitary Mobilization and masculine Representation in postwar Germany, 2002.

I found this book on DiscoverEd. This book discusses the fascist, the communist and other paramilitaries groups within Germany. This will allow me to contrast both groups and further improve my knowledge on the violence that occurred within Weimar Germany.

 

 

  • Otto Meissner’s Minutes of the Second Meeting between Hitler and Hindenburg (August 13, 1932)

Source of English translation: Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, eds., Nazism 1919-1945, Vol. 1, The Rise to Power 1919-1934. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998, pp. 104-05.

Source of original German text: Walther Hubatsch, Hindenburg und der Staat. Gottingen: Musterschmidt Verlag, 1966, p. 338.

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4414

This source is a conversation between Hindenburg and Hitler in 1932. This conversation details Nazi involvement within the Reichstag and most importantly discusses Hindenburg’s disapproval of the SA and their violent nature, which will be crucial for my dissertation.

One thought on “Annotated Bibliography – Declan Renton”

  1. Rosenhaft is a classic text and Siemens will become one. Dirk Schumann, Richard Bessel and Sven Reichardt are all important authors for Weimar paramilitarism. We discussed Romania and I can’t remember if I mentioned Roland Clark to you.

    The primary source is a good one, but I’m not sure that you’ll be able to write a dissertation that examines the effect of paramilitarism on high politics or the machinery of governance, because that would require access to government archives. We may need a slightly different focus.

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