Private Life and Privacy in Nazi Germany

It is often assumed that there was no such thing as private life under Nazi rule. This volume challenges that view by showing how non-Jewish Germans asserted their privacy and asking how far the regime encouraged such aspirations. At the same time, it traces how 'ethnic Germans' and Jews in occupied Poland sought to defend their privacy.

Was it possible to have a private life under the Nazi dictatorship? It has often been assumed that private life and the notion of privacy had no place under Nazi rule. Meanwhile, in recent years historians of Nazism have been emphasising the degree to which Germans enthusiastically embraced notions of community. This volume sheds fresh light on these issues by focusing on the different ways in which non-Jewish Germans sought to uphold their privacy. It highlights the degree to which the regime permitted or even fostered such aspirations, and it offers some surprising conclusions about how private roles and private self-expression could be served by, and in turn serve, an alignment with the community. Furthermore, contributions on occupied Poland offer insights into the efforts by ''ethnic Germans'' to defend their aspirations to privacy and by Jews to salvage the remnants of private life in the ghetto.