800 Reviews of Books
researched political profile of a tireless crisis man-
ager who contributed unselfishly to the fragile
political stability of the Weimar Republic. In so
doing, von Hehl helps us understand why contem-
poraries never ranked Marx among the great
leaders of the day and why the Center party
produced so few outstanding leaders for such
troubled times.
RENNIE W. BRANTZ
Appalachian State University
Gi:INTHER 105NKE. Organisierter Kapitalismus, Sozial-
demokratie und Staat: Eine Studie zur Ideologie der
sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer
Republik (1924-1932). (Studien zur modernen Ge-
schichte, number 37.) Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
1987. Pp. xii, 388. DM 88.
Giinther KOnke's study of Social Democratic ide-
ology in the second half of the Weimar era offers
a valuable new synthesis on a much-debated
theme. Focusing on the analysis of "organized
capitalism" and the introduction of Wirtschafts-
demokratie as the socialist goal, K.5nke pursues an
"examination of ideological 'attitudes' [Einstellung-
en], which are defined in the sphere of society and
economy and lie at the root of political action"
(p. ix). This is not as exceptional a methodology as
the author implies, but he employs it most effec-
tively. The result is less new information—most of
the sources are published—than a deeper compre-
hension of the historica! context. Although the
density of his prose tends to match the solidity of
his content, KOnke advances our understanding of
the orientation of Weimar Social Democracy.
"Organisierter Kapitalismus" was an optimistic
concept. Emphasizing structural change, it por-
trayed capitalism as having developed to the point
where, in spite of itself, it was setting the founda-
tions for a socialist economy. Some of the signposts
of this hypothesized progress—the extension of
state involvement in economic affairs during
World War I, the phenomenon of rationalization
in American industry—are familiar in the litera-
ture. KOnke gives them their due but in addition
demonstrates how much both the existence of the
republican state and the organizational mode of
Social Democratic thinking and action disposed
authorities like Rudolf Hilferding and Fritz Naph-
tali to hold to the institutional bias of their guiding
analysis. The goal of Wirtschaftsdemokratie, which
they elaborated in the late 1920s, fit comfortably
into this context and sanctioned the placid reform-
isrn of the Social Democratic party (SPD) and
unions as correct policy leading to the inevitable
socialist future.
Al! the same, as KOnke convincingly demon-
strates, Wirtschaftsdemokratie was a flimsy ideologi-
cal garment even in the favorable climate of Wei-
mar's stable years. Analytically, it put too positive a
value on industry's trend toward cartelization by
ignoring or playing down its reactionary political
implications. Similarly, Social Democratic theorists
optimistically misread the impact of state interven-
tion both in its control over the economy and in its
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potential to represent the common interest rather
than to adjust to the competitive norms of the
business world. Meanwhile, the economic progno-
sis of the Social Democrats remained superficial.
It comes as no surprise, then, that the SPD and
unions were at a theoretical loss in 1929-30, when
the depression struck and right-wing elements
substituted presidential government for the par-
liamentary regime. KOnke shows, however, that
the critics within their ranks possessed little more
wisdom. In most respects the left opposition
shared the perspectives of the ideological leader-
ship. More credit is given to the formulators of the
WTB plan of 1932, not because it was an economic
cure-all but on the ground that it could be a
trigger for activist policy. Yet already with the
unions' program Umbau der Wirtschaft of Novem-
ber 1932 the effort to escape a passive ideology
was over. In the larger scope KOnke argues that
Weimar Social Democracy chose a different pos-
ture than Karl Marx would have assumed. Here
he is unpersuasive, an exception in this very well
articulated analysis.
DAN S. WHITE
State University of New York,
Albanv
ERNST TOPITSCH. Stalin's War: A Radical New Theory
of the Origins of the Second World War. Translated by
A. TAYLOR and B. TAYLOR. New York: St. Martin's.
1987. Pp. 152. $19.95.
This brief book, originally published in German in
1985, contains the ruminations of a professor of
philosophy at Graz University on the órigins and
nature of World War II. We must learn here that,
in the good professor's view, most of the old fairy
tales are true after all. Hitler really did want peace
and was thwarted in this laudable aim first by the
British, who encouraged Poland to resist fair Ger-
man demands, then by the British and French
when they refused to make peace after the defeat
of Poland, and thereafter by the Soviet Union,
which decided in the summer of 1940 to attack
Germany, then deliberately provoked Germany
during the visit of Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav
Molotov to Berlin in November 1940 (so that the
Soviet Union could appear as the innocent victim),
and finally planned to attack Germany itself in
 Modern Europe
1941. Not only did the Soviets provoke the poor
peace-loving Germans into attacking them, they
were also responsible for the cruelty characteristic
of the war in the East.
When the more elaborate ruminations cannot
be based even on a distortion of the evidence, the
author simply uses his imagination. The plans for
the Soviet attack in 1941 are described in consid-
erable detail (pp. 110-11) but with no evidence
cited for them. Where the evidence shows that the
memoir literature is faulty, as for example in the
quotation attributed to Hermann Cdtking for Sep-
tember 3, 1939, at a meeting he did not attend
(p. 39), Ernst Topitsch prefers to rely on a fake
example that suits his theory. Historians will be
interested to learn here that the German ambas-
sador to France was murdered in 1938, that Brit-
ain and France took part in the Soviet-Finnish
War of 1939-1940, and numerous other novel
fictions.
Since the author believes that "most German
documents relating to the war were published
soon after the war ended" (pp. 4-5), when in fact
at that time the overwhelming majority of such
documents were still closed, he has not found it
necessary to do any research in either German
or other archives. The only thing radically new
about this book is a reputable publisher printing
such trash.
GERHARD L. WEINBERG
University of North Carolina
HEINZ HR'FEN. Verfolgung, Widerstand und Zeugnis:
Kirche im Nationalsozialismus; Fragen eines Histori-
kers. Mainz: Matthias Griinewald. 1987. Pp. 130.
DM 19.80.
The church struggle, it need hardly be said, has
become one of the hardy perennials of modern
German historiography. In this small volume,
Heinz Hikten offers a mosaic of reflections,
rooted in a comprehensive reading of recent
scholarship, on the problem of defining and eval-
uating ecclesiastical resistance to Nazism, chiefly
that of German Catholicism. Numerous brief but
thematically linked sections—nearly fifty subhead-
ings for just over a hundred pages of text—
attempt to identify the central "zone of conflict"
(p. 20) between church and regime, to explore the
multiple and sometimes contradictory levels of
meaning in terms such as resistance, and to sug-
gest a possible typology of criteria by which to
evaluate the church's institutional and theological
stance after 1933.
Hrten's discussion is thoughtful, judicious, and
low key. Writing primarily for nonspecialists, he is
801
less concerned with unearthing new evidence or
advancing new interpretations than he is with
underscoring the need for caution and a due
regard for the complexities of historical experi-
ence. In the end, he argues, the behavior of the
church eludes conclusive historical judgment. The
book's cover, fittingly enough, is a subdued study
in halftones.
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This is not to say that H rten lacks a distinct
point of view. One of his book's virtues, in fact, is
its transparent sensitivity to the values and presup-
positions that inform historical analysis. In
H rten's case these values are clearly those of a
loyal Catholic who regards the Third Reich as a
totalitarian negation of everything the church
claims to be and profess. For this reason he wants
to insist—and this constitutes his challenge to
fellow scholars—that the governing factor in as-
sessing the church's actions after 1933 cannot be
the scope of its (political) resistance but rather the
integrity of its (spiritual) witness in the fact of
systematic neopagan persecution. Hence, the title
of his book. For historians qua historians to sit in
judgment over the church's motives and purposes
would be to exceed the bounds of their profes-
sional competence. Historical research may help
establish facts and suggest insights, but it cannot
pretend to provide a sufficient basis for final
judgments in matters ecclesiastical. These are
properly the province of theology. Only the
church itself, in short, has ultimate authority to
judge its actions.
Not all scholars are likely to find such arguments
compelling. Specifically Catholic assumptions
aside, Hrten's notions about the task of history
will strike many historians (including, I suspect,
many who are practicing church members) as both
overly tidy and strangely circumscribed. His insis-
tence on a totalitarian model for understanding
the Nazi regime also seems a bit simplistic—and a
bit surprising, because H rten's deft review of
recent work on everyday life in the Third Reich
would lead one to expect similar attention to the
ongoing debates over the actual workings of the
Hitler state. Perhaps such omissions are part of the
price of H rten's treatment, which is concise and
deliberately selective throughout.
Casual perusal might suggest that H rten is an
uncritical apologist for the Vatican and the Ger-
man bishops. That would be a pity, for such is
hardly the case, and on the whole H rten's mus-
ings are marked by considerable learning and
good sense. If he fails to arrive at clear-cut answers
to many of the questions he poses, this failure
only confirms the obvious—neither the passage of
time nor the writing of much history has managed