80 Facts About Detlev Peukert

Detlev Peukert was a member of the German Communist Party until 1978, when he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Detlev Peukert grew up in Hamm-Herringen in the Ruhr area.

Detlev Peukert's work was criticized within Communist circles for his willingness to be critical of the decisions of the underground KPD in Nazi Germany, and his sensitivity to "human frailty" as he examined working class life in the Third Reich, writing that not everybody wanted to be a hero and die for their beliefs.

Detlev Peukert's work went beyond what the title of his PhD dissertation would suggest, as he examined the ideological motivation, organizational structure of the underground Communist Party, and the motivation and social background of a single individual Communist in the Ruhr and Rhineland convicted by German courts of belonging to the KPD.

Detlev Peukert was a leading expert in Alltagsgeschichte and his work often examined the effect of Nazi social policies on ordinary Germans and on persecuted groups such as Jews and Roma.

Detlev Peukert admitted to being influenced by Broszat's work with the "Bavaria Project", but he gave another reason for becoming interested in alltagsgeschichte in 1979.

Detlev Peukert wanted to explore why so many ordinary Germans who lived through the Nazi era remembered it as a time of "normality" and often in a very positive way while at the same time genocide was taking place.

Detlev Peukert argued there was a disconnect between the popular image today of the Nazi era as a time of unparalleled horror vs the way in which most ordinary Germans remembered it as a time of benign "normality", and that studying Alltagsgeschichte would explore what the Third Reich was actually like in "everyday life".

In 1984, Detlev Peukert was awarded the annual culture prize given by the city of Essen for his work with a history workshop group in Essen.

In 1984, Detlev Peukert won the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize for his habilitation on youth policy in Germany in late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Detlev Peukert was especially interested in the Edelweiss Pirates, a group of working class teenagers in Cologne and the other cities of the Rhineland who formed a distinctive anti-Nazi subculture, and who often fought the Hitler Youth.

For Detlev Peukert, to examine resistance and opposition in Alltagsgeschichte with no reference to the broader society led the historian no-where, and to resolve this problem he wrote his 1982 book Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde, which was translated into English as Inside Nazi Germany in 1987.

In Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde, Detlev Peukert looked at the experience of "everyday life" in Nazi Germany in its totality, examining both conformity and resistance equally to examine how all Germans, not just those in sub-cultures like the Edelweiss Pirates or the Ruhr miners had behaved.

Detlev Peukert sought to critically explore why so many ordinary Germans remembered the Third Reich as a time of blissful normality, arguing that there was a certain selectivity to what many people sought to remember, arguing that memories of genocide were not ones to cherish.

Detlev Peukert wrote that the popular claim, made after the war, that the Nazi regime stayed in power only because of terror was incorrect.

Detlev Peukert wrote that most ordinary Germans lived in a "grey zone" choosing support, accommodation and nonconformity at various times, never totally supporting the Nazi regime, but willing to accommodate themselves to the regime provided it served their own self-interests.

Detlev Peukert noted those who took part in such manifestations of "oppositionality" like the Swing Kids and the Edelweiss Pirates were challenging the regime, but not in such a way as to threaten its hold on power, which is why Detlev Peukert called these activities "oppositionality" rather than resistance.

In particular, Detlev Peukert wrote the Edelweiss Pirates by settling themselves apart from adults and those not from the Rhineland were in fact weakening the traditional German working class sub-culture.

Detlev Peukert wrote that even those Germans who went into "inner emigration", withdrawing from society as much as possible to avoid dealing with the Nazis as much as they could, helped the system worked.

Detlev Peukert noted that Hitler's role in standing in many ways above his system, with the standard explanation being that der Fuhrer was so busy with questions of war, art and statecraft that he had to delegate policy in the domestic sphere to his subordinates meant that most Germans did not blame the failures of the Nazi system on Hitler.

Detlev Peukert noted that instead of blaming Hitler, most Germans held to the hope that if only der Fuhrer would pay attention to domestic policy, then matters would be set right.

Detlev Peukert argued that many Germans disliked the NSDAP functionaries who assumed such power in their neighborhoods and believed if only their "abuses" were brought to Hitler's attention, he would dismiss them.

In common with many historians, Detlev Peukert noted that the "Hitler myth" of a superhuman Fuhrer who was steadily making Germany into the world's greatest power first began to fall apart with the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad as Hitler had staked his personal prestige on a victory on the Volga, repeatedly stating in his radio speeches in the fall of 1942 that he was executing his master plan for victory at Stalingrad.

Detlev Peukert was one of the first historians to make a detailed examination of the persecution of the Romani.

Detlev Peukert often compared Nazi policies towards Roma with Nazi policies towards Jews.

Detlev Peukert noted even through the Volksgemeinschaft as depicted in Nazi propaganda never really existed, many ordinary Germans if not sharing the exactly the same racial ideology as their regime seemed to approve of these executions as necessary to protect German racial purity.

The American historian Peter Baldwin criticized Detlev Peukert for treating the Swing Kids and Edelweiss Pirates sent to concentration camps as morally just as much as victims of the National Socialist regime as the Jews exterminated in the death camps.

Detlev Peukert argued even through the Social Democratic and Communist miners failed utterly in their attempts to overthrow the Nazi dictatorship, their willingness to take a stand, no matter how hopeless, and to suffer for their beliefs in the concentration camps meant that they should not be dismissed by historians as "losers".

For Detlev Peukert, inspired by the theories of Weber, saw the purpose of his work to help foster experts who have spirit and hedonists with a heart.

Detlev Peukert was politically engaged, and his last essay written shortly before his death, Rechtsradikalismus in historischer Perspektive warned against the rise of the party The Republicans led by the former SS-Unterscharfuhrer Franz Schonhuber, which had some popular support in Germany with its call for a ban on Turkish "guest workers".

In 1988, Detlev Peukert was appointed director of the Research Center for the History of National Socialism at Hamburg University and in 1989 was appointed Chair of Modern History at the University of Essen.

Detlev Peukert rejected both viewpoints, instead arguing for seeing Nazi Germany as the product of the "crisis of classical modernity".

Detlev Peukert was greatly influenced by the theories of Max Weber, but unlike many other scholars, who saw Weber attempting to rebut Karl Marx, he viewed Weber's principal intellectual opponent as Friedrich Nietzsche.

Detlev Peukert wrote that for Weber, the principal problems of modern Germany were:.

Detlev Peukert argued that the very success of German modernization inspired by the "dream of reason" meant the contradictions and problems of "classical modernity" were felt more acutely in Germany than elsewhere.

Detlev Peukert argued that starting in 1929 that the disjoint between Weimar democracy vs the problems of "classical modernity" started to fell apart when faced with the Great Depression.

Detlev Peukert argued that the creation of the Weimar welfare state in the 1920s had "politicized" economic and social relationships, and in the context of the Great Depression where economic resources were shrinking set off a Darwinian struggle for scare economic resources between various societal groups.

Detlev Peukert wrote by 1930 German society had with the notable exceptions of the working class and the Catholic milieus had turned into a mass of competing social interests engaged in a Darwinian verteilungskampf.

Detlev Peukert further maintained that the Hitler government of 1933, which was the last of the "presidential governments" was merely the final attempt by traditional elites in Germany to safeguard their status.

Detlev Peukert insisted that National Socialism was not some retrogression to the past, but instead reflected the "dark side" of modernity, writing: "The NSDAP was at once a symptom and a solution to the crisis".

Detlev Peukert saw his work as a "warning against the fallacious notion that the normality of industrial society is harmless" and urged historians to consider the "dark side of modernity", instead of seeing modernity as a benign development that was always for the best.

Detlev Peukert argued that though volkisch racism was extreme, it was by no means exceptional, and instead reflected the logic promoted by the social sciences throughout the West which had argued that the state can and should foster "normality" while identifying "the non-conformity that is to be segregated and eliminated".

Likewise, Detlev Peukert argued that Nazi Germany was not some freakish "aberration" from the norms of Western civilization, as he noted that the ideas about eugenics and racial superiority that the National Socialists drew upon were widely embraced throughout the Western world.

Detlev Peukert noted against the "freakish aberration" view of Nazi Germany that the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 stayed on the statute books in West Germany until 1969 as it was considered to be a "healthy law", leading to German homosexuals who survived the concentration camps continuing to be convicted all through the 1950s and 1960s under exactly the same law that sent them to the concentration camps under the Third Reich.

Detlev Peukert further commented that the Federal Republic of Germany never paid reparations to those homosexuals who survived the concentration camps as Paragraph 175 was considered a "healthy law" that was worth keeping, and those homosexual survivors who suffered so much in the concentration camps remained outcasts in post-war Germany.

Detlev Peukert wrote: "Eclectic as regards to ideas, but up to date in its attitude to technology, National Socialism laid claims to offer a "conclusive" new answer to the challenges and discomforts of the modern age".

Detlev Peukert argued that for the National Socialists "it was more important to travel hopefully than to arrive", as for the Nazis had no solutions to the problems of classical modernity other than a creating a sense of movement towards the vague goal of the utopian society that was to be the volksgemeinschaft.

Detlev Peukert noted that having promised "paradise" in the form of the volksgemeinschaft under the Weimar republic, there was much frustration within the Nazi movement when in 1933 the volksgemeinschaft in reality did not meet the idealized version of the volksgemeinschaft that had promised before 1933.

Detlev Peukert wrote that because of this frustration that the Nazis gave the volksgemeinschaft an increasing negative definition, lashing out in increasing vicious ways against any perceived "threats" to the volksgemeinschaft.

Detlev Peukert concluded that the National Socialists failed to create the idealized volksgemeinschaft, but they unwittingly laid the foundations for the stability of the Adenauer era in 1950s West Germany by promoting a mass consumerist society combined with extreme violence against their "enemies", which made politically engagement dangerous.

Detlev Peukert argued that what many considered to be the most notable aspect of the Adenauer era, namely an atomized, materialistic society made up of people devoted to consumerism and generally indifferent to politics was the Nazi legacy in West Germany.

Detlev Peukert was fluent in Spanish, and was very interested in the history of Latin America, especially the Dominican Republic, which he spent much of the late 1980s visiting.

Detlev Peukert was interested in youth policy in the Dominican Republic and spent much time in the barrios of Santo Domingo working as a volunteer helping poor teenagers.

Always a politically engaged historian, Detlev Peukert engaged in city planning for Santo Domingo and criticized the Dominican government for not doing more to help with the problems of poverty.

At the time of his death, Detlev Peukert had begun writing a biography of the Dominican dictator General Rafael Trujillo.

Detlev Peukert began his essay with an attack on the conservative side in the Historikerstreit, stating that the obsession of Ernst Nolte with proving that Hitler had been somehow forced into committing genocide by the fear of the Soviet Union was an apologistic argument meant to diminish the horror of Auschwitz.

Detlev Peukert further noted that on the origins of the Holocaust question that the internationalist argument that the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was all part of a master plan carried out by Hitler and a few of his followers is not longer accepted by most historians with the "Final Solution" being seen instead as the product of several processes coming together at the same time.

Detlev Peukert wrote that it was not antisemitism per se that led to genocide, but rather the project to purge the volksgemeinschaft of those seen as carrying unhealthy genes that was the beginning of genocide, which started with the Action T4 program.

Detlev Peukert argued that the Holocaust was not inevitable, but in the story of the "cumulative radicalization" of Nazi racial policy, "the most deadly option for action was selected at every stage".

Detlev Peukert wrote that by the beginning of the 20th century, the pattern of death had changed from being common amongst young people to being only common amongst the old, and this "banishment of death from everyday life" dramatically increased the prestige of science so that it was believed would soon solve all social problems.

Detlev Peukert argued that because the modern welfare state began in Germany in the 1870s, that this had encouraged an "utopian" view of social policy within Germany.

Detlev Peukert wrote that the great success by medical practitioners in reducing mortality in the 19th century had encouraged hopes that practitioners of the new emerging social sciences like sociology, criminology and psychology would soon solve all problems and personal unhappiness would be banished forever.

Detlev Peukert argued that scientific advances had reduced mortality, but could not end death, and unlike religion, science could offer no spiritual consolation.

Detlev Peukert wrote that for precisely these reasons, scientific racism was embraced since though the body of the individual would inevitably end, the volkskorper would live on.

Detlev Peukert wrote that as death is inevitable, scientists and those influenced by the scientists came to become obsessed with improving the health of the volk via "racial hygiene" as a bid for a sort of immortality.

Detlev Peukert wrote that after the First World War, the pre-war mood of optimism gave way to disillusionment as German bureaucrats found social problems to be more insolvable than at first thought, which in turn, guided by the prevailing Social Darwinist and eugenicist values led them to place increasing emphasis on saving the biologically "fit" while the biologically "unfit" were to be written off.

Detlev Peukert used as an example the fact that social workers had before the First World War had believed it was possible to ensure that every child in Germany was brought up in a happy home and by 1922 were instead declaring that certain young people were "biologically" prone to being "unfit", requiring a law on detention that was to remove them from society forever.

Detlev Peukert described the appeal of National Socialism to scientists and social engineers as offering a simplistic "racial" explanations for social failures in modern Germany, which allowed those making social policy to disregard economic and psychological factors as a reason for why some families were "losers".

Furthermore, Detlev Peukert argued that volkisch racism was part of a male backlash against women's emancipation, and was a way of asserting control over women's bodies, which were viewed in a certain sense as public property since women had the duty of bearing the next generation that would pass on the "healthy genes".

Detlev Peukert maintained that as the bearers of the next generation of Germans that Nazi social policies fell especially heavily upon German women.

Detlev Peukert argued that for volksgenossinnen, any hint of non-conformity and the "pleasures of refusal" in not playing their designated role within the volksgemeinschaft as the bearers of the next generation of soldiers could expect harsh punishments such as sterilization, incarceration in a concentration camp or for extreme case vernichtung.

Detlev Peukert argued that all of the National Socialist social policies such as natalist policies that relentlessly pressured Aryan women to have more and children were all part of the same effort to strengthen the volksgemeinschaft.

Detlev Peukert argued that despite a turn towards Social Darwinism when confronted with the failure of the welfare state to solve all social problems in the 1920s, that it was the democratic Weimar constitution that had provided a thin legal wedge that prevented the full implications of this from being worked out.

Detlev Peukert argued that in 1939 that the entire system that had been built up for scientifically identifying those of racial "non-value" served as the apparatus for genocide.

Detlev Peukert wrote: "Nazi racism, the professed goal which had been to secure the immortality of the racially pure volkskorper in practice inevitably became converted into a crusade against life".

Detlev Peukert wrote that the fascination with pseudo-scientific racial theories and eugenics were common to all of the West, but it was the specific conditions in Germany which allowed the National Socialists to come to power 1933 that led to the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".

Detlev Peukert wrote that after the war that scientists who had provided the intellectual justification for the "Final Solution" were not prosecuted and a massive effort to block the memory of their actions started which largely prevented any discussion of the subject in the 1950s-1960s.

At the time, there were no drugs to treat HIV besides AZT, and Detlev Peukert died in much agony, but was described by as having kept his spirits up to the end.

Wachsmann further noted that a central problem with Detlev Peukert's work was it was entirely concerned with Germany and he missed that the majority of the people killed by the Nazi regime were in Eastern Europe.

Smith in his review largely agreed with Waschman's point about that Detlev Peukert's focus on developments entirely within Germany was limited one.