Daniel Siemens

The Making of a Nazi Hero (eBook, ePUB)

The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

On 14 January 1930, Horst Wessel, a young and ambitious member of the SA was shot at close range at his home in Berlin. Although the crime was never completely solved, the murder was most likely committed by a group of communists with close ties to the city's gangland. Wessel later died from his injuries. Joseph Goebbels, whose attention had already been drawn to Wessel as a possible future Nazi leader, was the first to recognize the propaganda potential of the case. 'A young martyr for the Third Reich' he wrote in his diary on 23 February 1930 immediately after receiving the news of Wessel's death. This was the beginning of the myth-making that transformed an ordinary individual into a masculine role model for an entire generation. Two months later, thousands of people lined the streets for Wessel's funeral parade and Goebbels delivered a graveside eulogy. In the years that followed - and as Nazi power increased - Horst Wessel became the hero of the Nazi movement - with his elaborate memorial quickly becoming a site of pilgrimage.
The song Die Fahne Hoch for which Wessel had written the lyrics (and which subsequently became popularly known as the Horst Wessel Song) became the official Nazi party anthem and the Berlin district of Friedrichshain, where Wessel was murdered was renamed Horst-Wessel-Stadt in his honour. Numerous biographies and films followed. Using previously unseen material, Daniel Siemens provides a fascinating and gripping account of the background to Horst Wessel's murder and uncovers how and why the Nazis made him a political hero. He examines the Horst Wessel 'cult' which emerged in the aftermath of Wessel's death and the murders of revenge, particularly against Communists, committed by the SA and Gestapo after 1933. At the same time, the story of Horst Wessel provides a portrait of the Nazi propaganda machine at its most effective and most chilling.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. Februar 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780857733139
• Artikelnr.: 39141981

Autorenporträt

Daniel Siemens is Professor of European History at Newcastle University, UK. He is the author of The Making of a Nazi Hero (2013) and Metropole und Verbrechen (2007).

Inhaltsangabe

Preface Part I: A Young Man in Germany (1907-1930) Murder in Friedrichshain Father and Son The Young NaziThe SA Street BattleThe Escape of the Perpetrators Tracks to Nowhere The First Horst Wessel Trial (1930) Part II: The National Socialist Hero (1930-1945) 8.The Horst Wessel Cult9.With God's Blessing 10.A Hero for the Youth 11.Commemorated in Stone12.Appropriations 13.Literary Works 14.The Nazis' Revenge15.The Second Horst Wessel Trial (1934) 16.A Time of Suffering Part III: The Long Shadow of History (1945-2009) 17.Post-war Justice 18.Compensation for Wartime Losses19. Belated Justice