The Nazi Idea of a "People's Community"

Why did the Germans keep on supporting Hitler and the Nazis until the end of the war? Why didn’t they rise up against a regime that was committing mass murder and atrocity on an unimaginable scale? Why didn’t the mass Allied bombing of German cities lead to a popular revolt against Hitler? Many historians have tried to answer these questions over the years since the Nazi regime collapsed in ruins in 1945.

In recent years, historians have turned to the Nazi idea of building a ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft) for an explanation. After bitter divisions of the Weimar years, the promise of uniting all Germans in cooperation and harmony, it is now frequently argued, exerted a considerable popular appeal. The following pages take a closer look at some of the evidence that has been put forward in support of the view that the ‘people’s community’ was no mere propaganda ploy but had a real and widely supported content in terms of Germans’ attitudes towards the Nazi regime.

--Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in History and Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 118-119.