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Description of  The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919-1945

Who filled the ranks of the most infamous political party in history? This book is an in-depth study of the various groups that made up the membership and the leadership of the Nazi party in Germany from its beginnings to its destruction. First published in 1983 it was the first full-scale description of who the Nazis were, their history, and their categories of age, social class, occupation, sex, and locality. Using data from the partys membership cards alongside local and regional party member lists, Kater has developed an image of the people behind the infamous name. Kater also examines the leadership cadres and depicts the mentality that characterized their actions, linking it ultimately with the outcome of the Third Reich. Kater reveals a good deal about the general structure of German society in the first half of the twentieth century and the relationship that society bears to the phenomenon of Nazism. Its sophisticated methodology, a model of its kind, will interest those who champion the integration of quantification and literary archival scholarship.