Henry Ashby Turner

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Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. (April 4, 1932 – December 17, 2008) was an American

industrialists in Germany were the Nazi Party’s most influential supporters.[1][2]

Life and career

Turner was born in

University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin in Germany. In the fall of 1955, Turner began graduate study at Princeton University. He completed his M.A. in 1957 and his Ph.D. in 1960 under the supervision of Gordon A. Craig
.

Turner was hired by

German history. From 1981 to 1991, Turner also served as Master of Davenport College
, one of 12 residential colleges at Yale.

Turner retired in 2002 as the Stillé Professor of History. His papers are housed in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of

Yale-New Haven Hospital
.

Scholarship

In his essay "Fascism and Modernization" from the book Reappraisals of Fascism, following the arguments first made by

utopianism in that it was a vision that was both impractical and unachievable.[5]

Turner is best known for his book German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler, published in 1985, in which he rebutted the claim that it was German big business which primarily financed and otherwise promoted the attainment of power by

NSDAP had been much exaggerated. On the basis of careful examination of unpublished records of major German corporations and of the party, Turner concluded that the bulk of the Nazis' funds during their rise came from their party's members and other ordinary Germans. The principal political recipients of big business funding were the traditional center-right parties: the German People's Party and the German National People's Party. The only election campaign in which big business contributed significant amounts of money to the Nazis was the March 5, 1933 election
, after the Nazis had already assumed power.

Despite this, Turner concludes that Hitler endorsed the "liberal principle of competition" and private property during his rule, if only "he could distort them into his social Darwinist view of economic life."[6]

In Turner's view, the

Third Reich was a possible but by no means inevitable result of German history, thus leading Turner to oppose the Sonderweg thesis. Turner contended that the acquisition of power by Adolf Hitler was heavily influenced by contingency and that military rule was a viable alternative to the Third Reich. In his 1996 book Hitler's Thirty Days To Power: January 1933, he maintained that it was the actions of a few individuals, such as German president Paul von Hindenburg and chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher
, which enabled Hitler to come to power through semilegal means. Political incompetence and personal rivalry between Papen and Schleicher ultimately led to Hitler's being appointed chancellor of Germany by President Hindenburg on January 30, 1933 although he had never won a majority in a national election.

Turner's General Motors and the Nazis (2005) examined the history during the Third Reich of

General Motors
.

Works

Endnotes

  1. New York Times
    .
  2. ^ William Patch (February 5, 2009). "In Memory of Henry A. Turner". H-Net.
  3. ^ Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship (London: Edward Arnold, 2000), p. 168.
  4. ^ Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship (London: Edward Arnold, 2000), p. 168.
  5. ^ Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship (London: Edward Arnold, 2000), p. 168.
  6. JSTOR 40185062
    .

External links
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