Books by Jane Caplan

This is a collection of ten path-breaking essays on the history of the National Socialist regime in Germany. The topics covered here include the origins of the Second World War, the role of Hitler in the Nazi regime, and the position of the working class and of women under National Socialism. Each essay defines or reinterprets a significant debate in the history of the Nazi period. The essays, collected here for the first time, include four hitherto not published in English.

Many social and economic historians will be pleased to learn that this pioneering study is at long last available in English translation. This book analyses the attitudes and policies of the Nazi leadership towards the German working class. It argues that the regime did not securely integrate the working class and was thus very uncertain of itself when it came to imposing mass economic sacrifices in the interests of forced rearmament. With a growing labour shortage in the late 1930s, industrial conflict re-emerged: these two factors slowed down military preparations for war and may well, it is argued, have influenced Hitler's foreign policy in 1938/39. The author has added a substantial epilogue to this edition in which he responds to the main criticisms, aroused by the German original, and assesses the relevance of more recent research to the arguments put forward.