Henry Ashby Turner

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Henry Ashby Turner Jr. (born April 4, 1932 in Atlanta , Georgia , † December 17, 2008 in New Haven , Connecticut ) was an American historian . He taught German history at Yale University for more than forty years . He became known for his book Die Großunternehmer und der Aufstieg Hitler's, which was also published in German in 1985 .

Life

His Bachelor -Studies in Lexington , Virginia, in the Washington and Lee University graduating Turner 1954th He then went on a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin for a year , where he dealt with the politics of Gustav Stresemann . In 1957 he obtained his master's degree from Princeton University and in 1960 his Ph. D. from Gordon A. Craig at Yale University in New Haven, where he had taught German history since 1958, he became assistant professor in 1961, associate professor in 1964 and full professor in 1971 Professor. From 1976 to 1979 he was chairman of the historical faculty there. After holding a number of endowed professorships, he retired as Stillé Professor of History in 2002.

research

The focus of his research was the history of the Weimar Republic and National Socialism . In his comprehensive account of the role of large entrepreneurs, Turner showed that with a few exceptions, large-scale industry was critical of the NSDAP during the rise of Hitler and only switched to the NSDAP after the failure of Franz von Papen's favorite chancellor .

Turner became widely known among historians in Germany for his essays on fascism and capitalism in Germany , which were collected in 1972. In it he rejected the Marxist thesis that the large German entrepreneurs were important financial supporters of Hitler , which sparked a controversy with, for example, David Abraham , who in his work The Collapse of the Weimar Republic had attributed the main blame for the Nazis' seizure of power to big industry . In Turner's book German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (German: Die Großunternehmer und der Aufstieg Hitler ), he worked out his results further and rejected all efforts to interpret National Socialism as an exponent of the capitalist system. Turner had meticulously checked the documents of many large German corporations as well as the NSDAP. He deserves the credit of having developed important sources for the Nazi seizure of power. He came to the conclusion that before 1933 the majority of the NSDAP money had come from party members and meeting proceeds. On the other hand, most of the money from corporate circles had gone to the conservative political parties. The most favored party was therefore the German People's Party (DVP); in second place was the German National People's Party (DNVP); then came the center and fourth came the NSDAP.

The only election campaign in which the big businessmen generously supported the National Socialists took place in March 1933 (see Reichstag election in March 1933 ) after Hitler had already been appointed Chancellor . During his research, Turner discovered Hitler's brochure, Der Weg zum Wiederaufstieg , which Hitler had written for leading German industrialists.

According to Turner, Hitler's rise to power was a possible but not inevitable result. He suggests the thesis that the downfall of the Weimar Republic was strongly shaped by coincidences and contingencies and thus opposes the Sonderweg thesis of German history. According to this theory, National Socialism was an inevitable result of Germany's previous history. Turner assumes, however, that Germany still had four options with the Nazi dictatorship, the communist dictatorship, the military dictatorship and democracy in the early 1930s.

In his basic account of Gustav Stresemann ( Stresemann and the Politics of the Weimar Republic ) published in 1963 , he opposed the assumption of a specific “German way”. Turner describes Stresemann as a tenacious and initially successful champion of an understanding with France, who has not given up his long-term goal of regaining national sovereignty. In his 1999 published case study Hitler's Thirty Days to Power: January 1933 (German: Hitler's path to power: The January 1933 ) sets Turner's thesis before that only due to the failure of the responsible conservative set politicians around the success of the National Socialists Paul of Hindenburgs was made possible. Here played Oskar von Hindenburg , Alfred Hugenberg , Franz von Papen , Otto Meissner and Kurt von Schleicher , the leading roles.

Turner's last book General Motors and the Nazis (2005; German: General Motors und die Nazis ) deals with the development of the Opel plant , a subsidiary of the American car manufacturer, during the Nazi dictatorship. In this study he made it clear that the representatives of General Motors were only held responsible to a limited extent for the involvement of the plant in armaments production. But he does not hide the fact that the parent company, which claimed the dividends previously withheld in 1951 , became the beneficiary of the company's arms profits.

Turner's academic papers are held in the Yale University Library .

Fonts (selection)

  • Stresemann and the Politics of the Weimar Republic. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1963.
    • Stresemann. Republicans by reason. Leber, Berlin et al. 1968.
  • Fascism and Capitalism in Germany. Studies on the relationship between National Socialism and the economy. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1972, ISBN 3-525-01310-8 .
  • German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1985, ISBN 0-19-503492-9 .
  • The Two Germanies since 1945. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 1987, ISBN 0-300-03865-8 .
    • History of the two German states since 1945 (= Piper 883 series ). Piper, Munich et al. 1989, ISBN 3-492-10883-0 .
  • Scourge of the Century. Hitler and his legacy. Siedler, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-88680-353-8 .
  • Hitler's Thirty Days to Power. January 1933. Addison-Wesley, Reading MA et al. 1996, ISBN 0-201-40714-0 .
  • General Motors and the Nazis. The Struggle for Control of Opel, Europe's Biggest Carmaker. Yale University Press, New Haven CT et al. 2005, ISBN 0-300-10634-3 .
    • General Motors and the Nazis. The struggle for Opel. Econ, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-430-19206-4 .

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ William Grimes: Henry Turner, 76, Historian and Author, Is Dead . In: The New York Times . January 19, 2009