It may come as no great surprise that two small, mostly Protestant northern German towns supported Nazism a little earlier than other places. It will likewise probably shock few historians of modern Germany to learn that various conservative organizations and leaders helped the Nazis gain a foothold in such places. Christian Peters’ thorough analysis of Quakenbrück and Heide, though, offers a detailed explanation of how these processes worked. This effective micro-study, based on his 2014 dissertation, details the ways in which local political parties, organizations, and individuals built support for Nazism in two rural communities, one in Hanover and the other in Schleswig-Holstein. Peters focuses on the turbulent years of 1928 to 1933. He demonstrates that by 1928 Nazism had become a legitimate political force in these towns and, on the other hand, no longer faced any real opposition after July 1933. Peters’ use of “Machtdurchsetzung” rather than “Machtergreifung” to explain these events underscores his larger point that Nazism developed through local institutions. Indeed he maintains that “[d]ie nationalsozialistische Machtdurchsetzung wäre ohne das Engagement lokaler Funktionsträger bzw. Funktionseliten für nationalsozialistische Organisationen und ohne die Herrschaft auf Reichsebene in nord- bzw. nordwestdeutschen Land- und Kleinstädten nicht möglich gewesen.” (p. 37)

Quakenbrück and Heide were fairly similar: rural towns of under 10,000 people, chiefly Protestant, economically rooted in farming with limited professional or manufacturing presence, and heavily influenced by local “notables.” But one of the book’s two main strengths comes from Peters’ ability to draw useful conclusions from their small yet important differences. Above all Quakenbrück’s Catholic minority (about 37 percent of the confessing population) and pockets of workers (around 36 percent of listed professions) directed the development of conservatism and Nazism differently than in Heide. Nazi leaders and supporters became important in both towns during this critical period. But they assumed direct and indirect forms of leadership earlier in Heide, in part because there were fewer groups offering alternative visions there than in Quakenbrürck. These stories also conform to our understanding of voting patterns at the end of the Weimar Republic. But Peters shows that, while Catholic and worker parties curbed the NSDAP’s growth in Quakenbrück, these groups also eventually became whipping boys for Nazi visions of conservatism. Even those who opposed Nazism, in other words, helped clarify for local Nazi leaders what they needed to overcome and incorporate in their desire to create a total vision of political unity and authority.

Peters roots his analysis of these subtle developments in milieu theory, and therein lies this book’s second main strength. Scholars have deployed the concept of milieu particularly well to explain the manifold ways religion and local leadership have shaped developments in modern Germany. Peters draws heavily from the work of Thomas Welskopp, Wolfram Pyta, and especially Frank Bösch to explain the function of various milieux in the Nazi Machtdurchsetzung in these towns.1 Peters explains the process by which Nazi organizations became “Trägermilieu” in Quakenbrück and Heide. He also describes how some explicitly constituted groups like Vereine, religious associations, the SA, or political parties functioned as “Kontaktmilieu” or “assoziiertes Milieu.” This theoretical approach enables Peters to describe the subtle machinations between groups in Quakenbrück and Heide that helped place the Nazis in charge. He employs this vocabulary well to show that the formulation of power may have culminated in Nazi political authority, but it certainly grew from a much more complicated assortment of groups. At times, however, this book suffers from too much reliance upon these concepts. As vocabulary and building blocks for Peters’ argument, milieu theory makes sense. But this concept does not always explain developments in these two towns, nor does it push beyond. The main value of this (and any) good local study is to describe processes and help us to consider how those processes worked elsewhere. Peters could have taken his milieu analysis further by describing what this particular perspective reveals about power development in this important period.

After a general introduction and section on demography and theory, Peters organizes his book into small chronological periods. Section III studies the initial growth of Nazism in 1928 and early 1929. He begins to lay out his argument that the Catholic and, to a lesser extent, socialist milieux in Quakenbrück hindered growth of Nazism more than in Heide. As well, Quakenbrück suffered less from the agrarian crisis of this period, and newspapers there did not give the Nazi Party as much positive press as they received in Heide. At the polls the Zentrum Party in Quakenbrürck took some of the vote that in Heide went to the NSDAP, DNVP, and amalgamated Wirtschaftspartei. And already by 1928 the Heide SA had become an important Trägermilieu that would draw together various strains of conservatism under the Nazi banner.

Centered around the critical Reichstag election of 1930, Section IV describes the unravelling of various groups, including traditional political parties, from early 1929 through 1931. Arguably the strongest chapter, it weaves together social and political developments toward the Nazi “Durchbruch” of 1930. Opposition to the Young Plan galvanized conservatives in these towns (and elsewhere in Germany). During these two years or so, Nazi leaders in Heide gradually expanded support among all conservatives for building a Volksgemeinschaft. That concept also took root in Quakenbrück, but the more telling developments there were intense fighting between Nazi and Communist groups. Other conservative groups – the Center Party, Kriegervereine, the DNVP – gradually built a Bürgerblock to fight against a Social Democrat elected as Senator to the Quakenbrück town council. In both towns Nazi leaders gradually took the reins of conservative agitation around 1930, but their methods, timing, and electoral successes were unique to each place. Peters also delineates the different limits to the NSDAP’s authority.

Section V demonstrates how the NSDAP became the strongest party in both Quakenbrück and Heide by the summer of 1932. The Heide SA continued to serve as an important organizing force for turning conservatives into Nazis, even during the brief uniform and paramilitary ban from June 1930 to April 1931. Peters argues, in fact, that the Verbot did not work in Heide. And while the national government’s attempt to restrict paramilitary activity through these laws had more success in Quakenbrück, the ban and the continued tension between groups there ultimately lent more support to Nazi claims to be the strongest conservative party in town. The Nazi Party’s success in July 1932 elections in both locations illustrated that the NSDAP could grow in places with both right-wing unity and with multiple strains of conservatism. Section VI studies the different ways in which the Nazi Party responded to its only electoral downturn during the second half of 1932. This fairly traditional political analysis agrees with the national story that the NSDAP found it hard to govern and lost votes to other conservative parties, especially the DNVP and Center Party, because Germans were disillusioned with the Nazis’ inability to improve Germany quickly.

Section VII describes the final steps of the Nazi Machtdurchsetzung after Hitler became chancellor in January of 1933. While the new “Third Reich” government quickly made use of greater power to limit political competition, Peters demonstrates that the process of “coordinating” organizations at the local level followed patterns that had generally been set in the previous five years in both towns. In Quakenbrück Catholic, conservative, and Nazi groups gradually came together in the first half of 1933. The mandated dissolution of any socialist organizations of course helped this process, especially in Quakenbrück. And while the Center Party suffered some in the March 1933 election, Catholic conservatism continued to mitigate some Nazi authority in Quakenbrück in the Third Reich. Peters does not follow this theme past July 1933, but we are led to believe that Nazism did not reshape Quakenbrück quite as dramatically as it did Heide.

Peters’ final chapter reminds us of his central thesis: “dass das Engagement konservativer Funktionsträger für die Nationalsozialisten und die Ausbildung eines nationalsozialistischen Milieus erst die Machdurchsetzung auf lokaler Ebene ermöglichten.” (p. 442) Peters could have, though, drawn his conclusions further. What do we learn about the larger development of Nazism by studying these “lokale Ebenen”? How would a national view of Nazism during these years benefit from this kind of milieu study? While it is beyond the scope of Peters’ work, one implication is that the Nazi system that developed after 1933 also relied upon some of the same building blocks and local processes that Peters describes. At the same time, Peters could have strengthened his analysis by digging even deeper and introducing readers to more individuals. Names are conspicuously absent in this book, which is a shame, given the amount of local detail he otherwise musters. Nevertheless, this book is a welcome addition to our understanding of the complexity of Nazism and paints a rich picture of two places that should be read widely. The book also offers a thorough bibliography but could have benefitted from an index.

Note:
1 Thomas Welskopp, Banner der Brüderlichkeit. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie vom Vormärz bis zum Sozialistengesetz, Bonn 2000; Wolfram Pyta, Dorfgemienischaft und Parteipolitik 1918–1933. Die Verschränkung von Milieu und Partien in den protestanten Landgebeit Deutschlands in der Weimarer Republik, Düsseldorf 1996; Frank Bösch, Das konservative Milieu. Vereinskultur und lokale Sammlungspolitik in ost- und westdeutschen Regionen (1900–1960), Göttingen 2002.