Detlev Peukert: Difference between revisions

| name = Detlev Julio J.K. Peukert

| parents = Adolf Otto Konrad Peukert, Ilse Marie (Kramer) Peukert

}}'''Detlev Julio K. Peukert''' (September 20, 1950 in [[Gütersloh]] – May 17, 1990 in [[Hamburg]]) was a German [[historian]], noted for his studies of the relationship between what he called the "spirit of science" and [[the Holocaust]] and in [[social history]] and the [[Weimar Republic]]. Peukert taught modern history at the [[University of Essen]] and served as director of the Research Institute for the History of the [[Nazi Germany|Nazi Period]]. Peukert was a member of the [[German Communist Party]] until 1978, when he joined the [[Social Democratic Party of Germany]]. A politically engaged historian, Peukert was known for his unconventional take on modern German history, and in an obituary, the British historian [[Richard Bessel]] wrote that it was a major loss that Peukert had died at the age of 39 as a result of AIDS.{{sfn|Bessel|1990|p=323-324}}

Detlev Peukert was born in Gütersloh, Eastern [[Westphalia]], the son of Konrad Peukert, ana [[Mining engineering|mining engineer]] from [[Oederan|Oederan/Flöhs]] ([[Saxony]]), and his wife Ilse (Kramer) Peukert, a [[secretary]] from Gütersloh.<ref>Mary K. Ruby: ''"Peukert, Detlev J(ulio) K.".'' In: Contemporary Authors. A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields, Vol. 133, Detroit/London 1991, p. 315f.</ref> He grew up in a workingHamm-class familyHerringen in the [[Ruhr area]] and he was the first member of his family to attend university.{{sfn|Zimmermann|1991|p=245}} Many of his father's fellow coal miners had been members of either the [[SPD]] or [[KPD]], and were sent to concentration camps during the Nazi era.{{sfn|Zimmermann|1991|p=245}} Growing up in the coal miners' milieu, where many so had been sent to concentration camps for anti-Nazi views, left Peukert very interested in the subject of outsiders in the Third Reich, as he wanted to know why so many coal miners chose to oppose the Nazi regime when so many other ordinary people were passive, indifferent or supportive of the Nazi regime.{{sfn|Zimmermann|1991|p=245}} The coal miners of the Ruhr formed a distinctive sub-culture in Germany, known for their defiant, rebellious attitude to authority, left-wing views, and their often confrontational relations with the firm of Krupp AG, Germany's biggest corporation, which in turn was owned by the Krupp family, Germany's richest family. As a student, Peukert studied under [[Hans Mommsen]] at Bochum university, and began teaching at the University of Essen starting in 1978.{{sfn|Bessel|1990|p=323}}

Peukert wrote that the popular claim, made after the war, that the Nazi regime stayed in power only because of terror was incorrect.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} Peukert wrote though terror played a role in sustaining the Nazi regime, the majority of victims of the violence of that the German state inflicted in the Nazi era tended to be people considered to be "outsiders" in Germany like Jews, the Romany, "Marxists", the mentally ill, the disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the "asocial", and that for the most part, the state in the Nazi era left ordinary Germans alone to live their lives as they pleased.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} Peukert wrote with the "popular experience" of most Germans in the Nazi era, there were no clear-cut "villains and victims" with the American historian David Crew writing that Peukert had presented "a complex, morally disturbing picture" of ordinary people adjusting to what Peukert called "the multiple ambiguities of ordinary people".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} Peukert wrote that most ordinary Germans lived in a "grey zone" choosing support, accommodation and nonconformity at various times, never totally supporting the Nazi regime, but willing to accommodate themselves to the regime provided it served their own self-interests.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} As part of his studies into "everyday life" in Nazi Germany, Peukert very strongly argued that it was not a black-and-white picture with many of those taking part in youthful sub-cultures like the Edelweiss Pirates and the [[Swing Kids]], grumbling at work, and attending illegal jazz dance sessions at very least partially endorsed the regime and accepted the "Hitler myth" of a brilliant, benevolent ''Führer''.{{sfn|Nolan|1988|p=56}} Peukert noted those who took part in such manifestations of "oppositionality" like the Swing Kids and the Edelweiss Pirates were challenging the regime, but not in such a way as to threaten its hold on power, which is why Peukert called these activities "oppositionality" rather than resistance.{{sfn|Nolan|1988|p=56}} In particular, Peukert wrote the Edelweiss Pirates by settling themselves apart from adults and those not from the Rhineland were in fact weakening the traditional German working class sub-culture.{{sfn|Nolan|1988|p=56}} Peukert wrote: <blockquote>"The Third Reich cannot have failed to leave its mark on all members of society...Even resistance fighters who did not conform were weighted by the experience of persecution, by the sense of their own impotence, and of the petty compromises that were necessary for survival. The system did its work on the anti-fascists too, and often enough it worked despite the shortcomings of the fascists themselves".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}}</blockquote> Peukert wrote that even those Germans who went into "[[inner emigration]]", withdrawing from society as much as possible to avoid dealing with the Nazis as much as they could, helped the system worked.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} Peukert wrote that "inner emigration" led to "...self-absorption and self-sufficiency, to the mixture of "apathy and pleasure-seeking" described by one wartime diarist...Paradoxically, then, even the population's counter-reaction to the National Socialist pressure of mobilization served to stabilize the system".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}}

Using a phrase coined by the British historian Sir [[Ian Kershaw]], Peukert argued that the "Hitler myth" of a brilliant, infallible, and larger-than-life ''Führer''-a charismatic statesman who was also a talented general and artist-was the main psychological mechanism that held together popular support and acquiescence in the regime as even many Germans who did not like the Nazis accepted the "Hitler myth".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} Peukert noted that Hitler's role in standing in many ways above his system, with the standard explanation being that ''der Führer'' was so busy with questions of war, art and statecraft that he had to delegate policy in the domestic sphere to his subordinates meant that most Germans did not blame the failures of the Nazi system on Hitler.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} Peukert noted that instead of blaming Hitler, most Germans held to the hope that if only ''der Führer'' would pay attention to domestic policy, then matters would be set right.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} Peukert argued that many Germans disliked the NSDAP functionaries who assumed such power in their neighborhoods and believed if only their "abuses" were brought to Hitler's attention, he would dismiss them.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} In common with many historians, Peukert noted that the "Hitler myth" of a superhuman ''Führer'' who was steadily making Germany into the world's greatest power first began to fall apart with the German defeat at the [[Battle of Stalingrad]] as Hitler had staked his personal prestige on a victory on the Volga, repeatedly stating in his radio speeches in the fall of 1942 that he was executing his master plan for victory at Stalingrad.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} The fact that Hitler's "master-plan" for victory at Stalingrad instead ended with the destruction of the entire German 6th Army, made worse by the fact that it was the hands of the "Asiatic hordes" as Nazi propaganda always called the Red Army, was a terrible blow to Hitler's prestige, but even then the "Hitler myth" continued to exert it power, albeit in a diluted form.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}} Against the traditional view that the "Hitler myth" came "from above", being the work of Joseph Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry, Peukert argued that the "Hitler myth" came just as much "from below" as ordinary people chose to invest their hopes in the "Hitler myth" as a way of rationalizing their passivity in the Third Reich.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=325}}

Peukert was one of the first historians to make a detailed examination of the persecution of the [[Romani people|Romani]]. Peukert often compared Nazi policies towards Roma with Nazi policies towards Jews. On the basis of his research into popular attitudes towards "outsiders" in the Third Reich, Peukert came up with the concept of "everyday racism" to explain the contrast between the "normality" of life for most Germans while genocide was being committed.{{sfn|Nolan|1988|p=77}} By "everyday racism", Peukert meant a certain causal racism that allowed people to accept violence being committed against those considered to be different.{{sfn|Nolan|1988|p=77}} Peukert wrote about: "a fatal continuum of discrimination, selection, and rejection/elimination, whose monstrous consequences perhaps remained hidden from most contemporaries in their totality but whose inhumane daily racism was not only constantly and everywhere present but until today has not been critically worked through".{{sfn|Nolan|1988|p=77}} As part of his research into "everyday racism", Peukert explored how ordinary people use of disparaging language to describe the homeless allowed them to see as justified the mass incarceration of the homeless into the concentration camps under the grounds that the homeless were part of the "asocial" threatening the ''volksgemeinschaft''.{{sfn|Nolan|1988|p=77}} In his research into opinion during the war years, Peukert noted that thousands of Polish and Frenchmen were brought to work in Germany as slave laborers to replace German men who been called up into the [[Wehrmacht]].{{sfn|Kater|1992|p=292}} Those Poles and sometimes Frenchmen found to be enjoying sexual relationships with German women were harshly punished, being publicity hanged and on some occasions castrated as "race-defilers" threatening the ''Volksgemeinschaft''.{{sfn|Kater|1992|p=292}} Peukert noted even through the ''Volksgemeinschaft'' as depicted in Nazi propaganda never really existed, many ordinary Germans if not sharing the exactly the same racial ideology as their regime seemed to approve of these executions as necessary to protect German racial purity.{{sfn|Kater|1992|p=292}} As a homosexual, Peukert was especially interested in the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. As a gay man, Peukert was especially troubled by those who used the homosexuality of Nazi leaders like [[Ernst Röhm]] as an excuse for homophobia, writing: <blockquote>"The National Socialists' fundamental hostility to homosexuals should not be trivialized by references to individual Nazi leaders' homosexuality. The disgraceful denunciation of SA leader Ernst Röhm, precisely by the Social Democratic press, to gain votes in 1930, thus sullying its own liberal tradition, was taken up again after the so-called [[Röhm ''putsch''Putsch]] of 1934 and used by the National Socialists to justify their murderous actions".{{sfn|Zimmermann|1991|p=247}}</blockquote>

Peukert was also politically engaged, and his last essay written shortly before his death, ''Rechtsradikalismus in historisherhistorischer Perspektive'' (''Right-wing Radicalism in the Historical Perspective'') warned against the rise of the Republicanparty Party[[The Republicans (Germany)|The Republicans]] led by the former SS-''[[Unterscharführer]]'' [[Franz Schönhuber]], which had some popular support in Germany with its call for a ban on Turkish "[[Gastarbeiter|guest workers]]".{{sfn|Zimmermann|1991|p=247}} In 1988, Peukert was appointed director of the Research Center for the History of National Socialism at Hamburg University and in 1989 was appointed Chair of Modern History at the University of Essen.{{sfn|Zimmermann|1991|p=247}} The attempt to appoint Peukert to Hamburg University caused much opposition from the more conservative historians, who made it clear they did not want an openly gay man teaching at their university.{{sfn|Bessel|1990|p=323}} Until 1994, [[Paragraph 175]] was still in effect in Germany as homophobia was rampant in Germany long after the end of the Third Reich, and many historians did not want to work with a "criminal" like Peukert.

One of the central issues of German historiography has been the debate over the ''[[Sonderweg]]'' question, namely whatever German history in the 19th and 20th centuries developed along such lines as to make the Third Reich inevitable.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=319-320}} The "[[Bielefeld School]]" associated with [[Hans-Ulrich Wehler]], [[Jurgen Kocka]] and others have argued for a failed modernization of Germany with the ''Junkers[[Junker (Prussia)|Junker]]s'' holding inordinate political and social power in the 19th century that led to Nazi Germany in the 20th century. The most famous riposte to the ''Sonderweg'' thesis was the 1984 book ''The Peculiarities of German history'' by two British Marxist historians, [[David Blackbourn]] and [[Geoff Eley]]. In ''The Peculiarities of German History'', Eley and Blackourn argued for the "normality" of modern German history.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=319-320}}

Peukert rejected both viewpoints, instead arguing for seeing Nazi Germany as the product of the "crisis of classical modernity".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=320}} One of the central objections to the "normality" thesis promoted by Eley and Blackbourn has been if Germany was such a "normal" and "modern" nation, how does one explain the Holocaust?{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=320}} Though Peukert rejected the ''Sonderweg'' thesis, he criticized Eley and Blackbourn for associating modernity with "progress", and argued for a "skeptical de-coupling of modernity and progress".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=320}} Peukert argued that historians must: <blockquote>"raise questions about the pathological and seismic fractures within modernity itself, and about the implicit destructive tendencies of modern industrial class society, which National Socialism made explicit and which elevated it into mass destruction...This approach is supported by a wide variety of debates that have gone within the social sciences, using such notions as 'social disciplining' ([[Michel Foucault|Foucault]]), the pathological consequences of the civilizing progress ([[Norbert Elias|Elias]]), or the colonisation of the ''Lebenswelten'' ([[Jürgen Habermas|Habermas]]).{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=320}}</blockquote> Peukert often wrote on the [[social history|social]] and [[cultural history]] of the [[Weimar Republic]] whose problems he saw as more severe examples of the problems of [[modernity]]. Peukert argued that societies that have reached "classical modernity" are characterized by advanced capitalist economic organization and mass production, by the "rationalization" of culture and society, massive bureaucratization of society, the "spirit of science" assuming a dominant role in popular discourses, and the "social disciplining" and "normalization" of the majority of ordinary people.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=320}} Peukert was greatly influenced by the theories of [[Max Weber]], but unlike many other scholars, who saw Weber attempting to rebut [[Karl Marx]], he viewed Weber's principal intellectual opponent as [[Friedrich Nietzsche]].{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=320}} Peukert wrote that for Weber, the principal problems of modern Germany were:

Contrary to the "Bielefield[[Bielefeld schoolSchool]]", Peukert argued by the time of the Weimar Republic, Germany had broken decisively with the past, and had become a thoroughly "modern" society in all its aspects.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=321}} Peukert argued that the very success of German modernization inspired by the "dream of reason" meant the contradictions and problems of "classical modernity" were felt more acutely in Germany than elsewhere.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=321}} For Peukert, the problems of "classical modernity" were:

Peukert argued that starting in 1929 that the disjoint between Weimar democracy vs. the problems of "classical modernity" started to fell apart when faced with the Great Depression.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=324}} Peukert maintained that the Weimar Republic was a muddled system built out of the compromises between so many different interests with for instance [[Weimar Coalition]] consisting of the left-wing SPD, the liberal DDP, and the centre-right ''Zentrum'' being the only political parties wholeheartedly committed to the Weimar republic.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=324}} Other competing interests in Germany included the struggle between men vs. women, farmers vs. towns, Catholics vs. Protestants, and unions vs. business.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=324}} Peukert argued that the creation of the Weimar welfare state in the 1920s had "politicized" economic and social relationships, and in the context of the Great Depression where economic resources were shrinking set off a Darwinian struggle for scare economic resources between various societal groups.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=324}} Peukert wrote by 1930 German society had with the notable exceptions of the working class and the Catholic milieus had turned into a mass of competing social interests engaged in a Darwinian ''verteilungskampf'' (distribution struggle).{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=324}} In this context, Peukert argued that for much of German society, some sort of authoritarian government was welcome out of the belief that an authoritarian regime would favor one's own special interest group at the expense of the others.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=324}} Given the ''verteilungskampf'', Peukert argued that this explain why the "presidential governments"-which from March 1930 onward by-passed the ''[[Reichstag'' (Weimar Republic)|Reichstag]] and that answered only to President [[Paul von Hindenburg]]-governing Germany in a highly authoritarian manner were so approved of by German elites.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=324}} Peukert further maintained that the Hitler government of 1933, which was the last of the "presidential governments" was merely the final attempt by traditional elites in Germany to safeguard their status.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=324}} Peukert insisted that National Socialism was not some retrogression to the past, but instead reflected the "dark side" of modernity, writing: "The NSDAP was at once a symptom and a solution to the crisis".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=320}}

In the same way, Peukert noted in ''Inside Nazi Germany'' as part of his argument against the "freakish aberration" view of the Nazi era that homosexual sex had been made illegal in Germany with Paragraph 175 in 1871 and all the Nazis did with the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 was to make it tougher, as the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 made being homosexual in and of itself a criminal offense, whereas the 1871 version of Paragraph 175 had only made homosexual sex a criminal offense.{{sfn|Peukert|1987|p=220}} Peukert also noted against the "freakish aberration" view of Nazi Germany that the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 stayed on the statute books in West Germany until 1969 as it was considered to be a "healthy law", leading to German homosexuals who survived the concentration camps continuing to be convicted all through the 1950s and 1960s under exactly the same law that sent them to the concentration camps under the [[Third Reich]].{{sfn|Peukert|1987|p=220}} Peukert further commented that the [[Federal Republic of Germany]] never paid reparations to those homosexuals who survived the concentration camps as Paragraph 175 was considered a "healthy law" that was worth keeping, and those homosexual survivors who suffered so much in the concentration camps remained outcasts in post-war Germany.{{sfn|Peukert|1987|p=220}}

Peukert argued that for the National Socialists' "it was more important to travel hopefully than to arrive", as for the Nazis had no solutions to the problems of classical modernity other than a creating a sense of movement towards the vague goal of the utopian society that was to be the ''volksgemeinschaft''.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=326}} Peukert wrote the "violent answers" of the Nazis to the "contradictions of modernity" were not the basis of a successful social order, and as such the dynamism of the Nazi movement was primarily negative and the "movement" had a strong self-destructive streak.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=326}} Peukert noted that having promised "paradise" in the form of the ''volksgemeinschaft'' under the Weimar republic, there was much frustration within the Nazi movement when in 1933 the ''volksgemeinschaft'' in reality did not meet the idealized version of the ''volksgemeinschaft'' that had promised before 1933.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=326}} Peukert wrote that because of this frustration that the Nazis gave the ''volksgemeinschaft'' an increasing negative definition, lashing out in increasing vicious ways against any perceived "threats" to the ''volksgemeinschaft''.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=326}} As part of this trend, there was a tendency as the Third Reich went along for the Nazis to seek to erase all nonconformity, deviance and differences from German society with anyone who was not a perfect ''Volksgenossen'' ("National Comrade") considered to be in someway an "enemy".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=326}} In this way, the violence that the Nazis had directed against "outsiders" in Germany had gradually started to be applied against at least some of the previous "insiders" as those ''Volksgenossen'' who for whatever reason did not quite measure up to the ideal found there was no place for them in the ''volksgemeinschaft''.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=327}} Peukert concluded that the National Socialists failed to create the idealized ''volksgemeinschaft'', but they unwittingly laid the foundations for the stability of the Adenauer era in 1950s West Germany by promoting a mass consumerist society combined with extreme violence against their "enemies", which made politically engagement dangerous.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=327}} Peukert argued that what many considered to be the most notable aspect of the Adenauer era, namely an atomized, materialistic society made up of people devoted to consumerism and generally indifferent to politics was the Nazi legacy in West Germany.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=327}}

Peukert is perhaps best known for his 1989 essay “The Genesis of the 'Final Solution’ from the Spirit of Science” from his book ''Max Webers Diagnose der Moderne''. Peukert began his essay with an attack on the conservative side in the ''[[Historikerstreit]]'', stating that the obsession of [[Ernst Nolte]] with proving that Hitler had been somehow forced into committing genocide by the fear of the Soviet Union was an apologistic argument meant to diminish the horror of Auschwitz.{{sfn|Peukert|1994|p=276}} Peukert further noted that on the origins of the Holocaust question that the internationalist argument that the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was all part of a master plan carried out by Hitler and a few of his followers is not longer accepted by most historians with the "Final Solution" being seen instead as the product of several processes coming together at the same time.{{sfn|Peukert|1994|p=277}} Peukert wrote that the ''Shoah'' was not the result solely of anti-Semitism, but was instead the a product of the “"[[cumulative radicalization]]”" in which “numerous"numerous smaller currents”currents" fed into the “broad"broad current”current" that led to genocide.{{sfn|Peukert|1994|p=280}} Peukert wrote the Holocaust was a product of:

*the "escalation of terror" following the conquest of Poland in September 1939 and then by the "war of extermination" launched against the Soviet Union with [[Operation Barbarossa]] in June 1941 with Hitler giving the Commissar Order, unleashing the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' to exterminate Soviet Jews, and the orders to allow millions of Soviet POWs to stave to death.{{sfn|Peukert|1994|p=277}}

Peukert wrote that when faced with the same financial concerns that their predecessors in the Imperial and Weimar periods had faced, social workers, teachers, professors and doctors in the Third Reich began to advocate plans to ensure that the genes of the "racially unfit" would not be passed on to the next generation, first via sterilization and then by killing them.{{sfn|Peukert|1994|p=289-290}} Furthermore, Peukert argued that ''völkisch'' racism was part of a male backlash against women's emancipation, and was a way of asserting control over women's bodies, which were viewed in a certain sense as public property since women had the duty of bearing the next generation that would pass on the "healthy genes".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=323}} Peukert maintained that as the bearers of the next generation of Germans that Nazi social policies fell especially heavily upon German women.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=323}} Peukert argued that for ''volksgenosseninnenvolksgenossinnen'' (female "national comrades"), any hint of non-conformity and the "pleasures of refusal" in not playing their designated role within the ''volksgemeinschaft'' as the bearers of the next generation of soldiers could expect harsh punishments such as sterilization, incarceration in a concentration camp or for extreme case ''vernichtung'' ("extermination").{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=323}} Peukert wrote that "after 1933 any critical public discussion and any critique of racism in the human sciences from amongst the ranks of the experts was eliminated: from then on, the protective...instances of the ''[[Rechtsstaat]]'' (legal state) no longer stood between the racist perpetrators and their victims; from then on, the dictatorial state put itself solely on the side of racism".{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=323-324}} Peukert argued that all of the National Socialist social policies such as natalist policies that relentlessly pressured Aryan women to have more and children were all part of the same effort to strengthen the ''volksgemeinschaft''.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=323}} Peukert argued that despite a turn towards Social Darwinism when confronted with the failure of the welfare state to solve all social problems in the 1920s, that it was the democratic Weimar constitution that had provided a thin legal wedge that prevented the full implications of this from being worked out.{{sfn|Crew|1992|p=323-324}}

*''Die Reihen fast geschlossen: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alltags unterm Nationalsozialismus'' co-edited with [[Jürgen Reulecke]] & Adelheid Gräfin zu Castell Rudenhausen-Rüdenhausen, Wuppertal: Hammer, 1981.

*{{cite journal|last=Bessel|first=Richard|title=Detlev J.K. Peukert|pages=321–324|journal=German History|volume=8|number=3|date=August 1990|doi=10.1093/gh/8.3.321|doi-access=free}}

*{{cite journal|last=Lindemann|first=Albert|title=Review of ''Die KPD im Widerstand Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit am Rhein und Ruhr, 1933-1945''|page=205 |journal=The American Historical Review|volume=82|number=1|date=February 1982|doi=10.2307/1863393|jstor=1863393}}