Legitimation, Kooptation und Repression im NS-Regime

Abstract

"This essay deals with the interplay between cooptation, legitimation, and repression with a special emphasis on the Nazi attitude and the behavior towards politically indifferent Germans. It analyzes the ideological framework of justification for the repressive Nazi politics that were also used to recruit followers who had a clean conscience and felt they were doing the right thing. Nazi ideology rejected the bourgeois - Christian concepts of universal human rights and dignity as anachronistic while simultaneously using these concepts for ideological purposes. Finally, the article shows how opportunism and radical activism stood side by side in Nazi Germany, with both of these attitudes contributing to the stabilization of the Nazi regime." (author's abstract)