ramblings

Although Fritzsche repeats his main thesis of political mobilization ad nauseam, I was most interested in a point he seemed to make in passing that nevertheless does much explain the progression he seeks to delineate – Germans into Nazis. With the increasing amounts of political participation by the German citizens, another trend emerges simultaneously – the squaring off of “working-class socialists and bourgeois nationalists […] into mutually opposed and increasingly radical camps” – that Fritzsche only briefly touches on. But this point seems extremely important. The political mobilization of the masses would amount to little and would have little historical significance if their new participation was not increasingly extremist and divided. Through all the examples of political participation that Fritzsche gives, it is clear that all participation happened on one extreme side or another. Within these extremes themselves there was obviously much disagreement, but regardless the line had been drawn – nationalists versus socialists. Increasingly the German population seemed to abandon any attempts to stay inbetween these two sides, the middle ground. This large-scale abandonment of the middle ground leads inevitably to the radicalization of each extreme. Now, with two such extremes pitted against each other, when, in the course of events, one of the two groups takes over that group will have taken control without having to compromise any of their positions – literally prying control from the opposing side by sheer political mobilization. Thus the radical agenda they had fostered in order to separate and differentiate themselves from their opponents becomes the dangerous and radical agenda of the state. If, however, one of the two extreme sides fails to take control then the inevitable result will be the flourishing of a new group who arises by pandering to specific radical desires of both sides. Either way, the state becomes controlled by radical thought.