National Socialism as Individual and Social Challenge after 1933 and 1945

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In its two parts the research project scrutinizes the individual attitudes to and dealings with National Socialism from 1933 to 1939 as well as in the early post-war years. In both periods state institutions demanded that individuals determine their relationships to National Socialism. Thus, National Socialism challenged both the contemporaries' self-images and their accustomed ways of interaction. The research project analyses the individual experiences with and reactions to these challenges and tries to determine their significance for the broader social transformations that took place after 1933 and 1945. Scrutinizing a large sample of diaries and letters, the first project asks if and how far the National Socialist claim to fundamentally alter German society changed people's everyday life-world in the years from 1933 to 1939. In addition, it tries to determine if and in how far the people's changing attitudes and behavior affected the regime's power to implement changes. It thereby concentrates on everyday practices as well as on individual self-images. The second project focusses on the individual dealings with National Socialism in the process of "denazification". It treats denazification trials as a central space in which individuals had to deal with their own past during the National Socialist rule and individual biographies were renegotiated. In particular, the project examines how the institutional framework of denazification affected stories about the individuals' National Socialist past and asks in how far these narratives influenced later treatments of their lives under National Socialism.