The “Special Path” or Sonderweg Thesis of Why the Nazis Came to Power

Following German unification, the Iron Chancellor, as Bismarck was dubbed, created political and constitutional arrangements for the new empire. These gave rise to another interpretation of why the Nazis came to power, the “special path” (Sonderweg) thesis. According to this argument, Germany never had a bourgeois (middle-class) revolution – such as the French Revolution – to send it down the path toward liberal democracy.

Sonderweg proponents claimed that German leaders pursued aggressive policies because there was a mismatch between Germany’s rapid industrialization and its backward political and social order.

--Catherine Epstein, Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths, Wiley Short Histories (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 2-3.