Henry Ashby Turner

Henry Ashby Turner is a American historian of Germany.

Related Topics:
American - Historian - Germany

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Turner is best known for his work German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, in which he rebuts the Marxist claim that it was German big business that primarily financed the Nazis seizure of power. In his book, Turner argues that the extent of business support for the Nazis has been much exaggerated. By a careful examination of the records of all of the major German corporations and of the Nazi Party, Turner established that the bulk of Nazi funds prior to 1933 came from ordinary Germans and that the political parties patronized by big business, in order of greatest to smallest, were the German People's Party, the German National People's Party, the Catholic Center Party; the Nazis were last. Moreover, prior to March 5, 1933 election, giving Hitler his "mandate," most of the corporate donations to the Nazis, to the extent they were made, were mostly in the form of an "insurance policy", namely, as a way of trying to remain in the good graces of the Nazis should they come to power. The only election campaign in which big business generously contributed to the Nazis was the one of 1933, when the Nazis were already in power. Before 1933, the majority of German industrialists and bankers preferred that the Nazis not come to power, and contributed accordingly.

Related Topics:
Marxist - Nazis - Nazi Party - German People's Party - German National People's Party - Catholic Center Party - March 5 - 1933

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Turner is opposed to the Sonderweg view of German history that sees Nazism as the inevitable result of how German history developed. In Turner's view, Nazism was a possible, but not means inevitable outcome of German history. Turner has argued that there was much contingency in Weimar period, and that in the early 1930s, there were four ways Germany could go politically:

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• Nazi Dictatorship
• Communist Dictatorship
• Military Dictatorship
• Continuation of democracy.

In his 1996 book Hitler's thirty days to power : January 1933, Turner presented a case that it was only the actions of a few individuals such as Paul von Hindenburg, Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher that tripped the balance in favor of the Nazi outcome to the Weimar crisis, and gave Adolf Hitler the Chancellorship. His latest book concerned the history of General Motors under Nazi Germany.

Related Topics:
1996 - Paul von Hindenburg - Franz von Papen - Kurt von Schleicher - Adolf Hitler - General Motors - Nazi Germany

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Turner is Stille Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University.

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Henry Ashby Turner: Work ►