Creating the Nazi Marketplace

S. Jonathan Wiesen is Associate Professor of History at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is the author of West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945–1955 (2001) - co-winner of the 2002 book prize from the Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference - and the co-editor of Selling Modernity: Advertising in Twentieth-Century Germany (2007). His work has appeared in multiple scholarly journals, including Central European History, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Journal of Contemporary History.

• Introduction; 1. National Socialism and the market; 2. Commerce for the community: advertising, marketing, and public relations in Hitler's Germany; 3. Rotary clubs, consumption, and the Nazis' achievement community; 4. Finding the 'voice of the consumer': the Society for Consumer Research in the 1930s; 5. World War II and the virtuous marketplace; Conclusion.

'In this deeply researched and richly argued book, S. Jonathan Wiesen suggests that, rather than illustrating the 'primacy of politics' over the economy, the Nazi marketplace was central to the regime's promise of future consumer abundance, the realization of individual achievement, and the creation of a purified 'racial community.' In addition to highlighting the contradictions in the regime's attempt to reconcile communal and private interests and its pursuit of rearmament and war while satisfying civilian needs, the Nazi marketplace exposed the overlapping desires of business elites and marketing professionals to preserve their autonomy from political interference while advancing the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft.' Shelley Baranowski, University of Akron