German White Collar Workers and the Rise of Hitler

In 1986 Arthur Vidich prepared the introduction to Hans Speier's classic work, German White Collar Workers and the rise of Hitler. While this book may be relatively unknown to most Americans and even to most sociologists, it is an exceptionally important analysis of the factors that led to Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s.  The social, economic and political changes that enabled fascism to emerge in Germany after World War I have an uncanny resemblance to the transformations occurring within American society today. Arthur Vidich and Hans Speier were colleagues at the New School for Social Research and their relationship enabled Vidich to gain important insights into fascism's roots which strongly influenced some of his later writing on nativism in America.  In his introduction to Speier's book Vidich asked a key question: "Is fascist governance an intrinsic possibility in the democratic West?" While it may seem counter-intuitive for white collar workers to be enablers of fascism, Speier clearly shows how Germany's salaried white collar workers were easily manipulated by Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party after years of economic depression, loss of prestige and general moral malaise following the nation's devastating defeat in World War I.  Speier's book, although out of print, remains a classic analysis of the causes of fascism. Its trenchant analysis of the social and economic forces that enabled the rise of Hitler, should be must reading for any American concerned with the fascist tendencies that have surfaced in the post-Obama era of American government.