Sonderweg's Contribution To National Socialism

“German” history is a history of a dominant culture stretching back as far as the Franks. By looking at Germany’s historical roots, one can see how the implementation of the Sonderweg presents a theory about how Germany developed from a feudal society to a modern one using a “third way” to achieve its present state. By looking at how historians and scholars understand the Sonderweg thesis, one can make analytical argument that the Sonderweg led to National Socialism as well as did not lead to National Socialism.
The only way one can answer this issue is to understand the concept and definition of “Sonderweg”. The word Sonderweg is a German word meaning “special path” that presents a specific theory in German historiographies that argues that …show more content…
R. Evans argued that the roots of political issues arouse from a failed bourgeois revolution in 1848. Blackbourn and Eley looked at Germanys rise from a lower class perspective. Blackbournn and Eley assert that the bourgeois entrance into the agrarian alliance not from lack of political self-confidence, but as the best means to secure political aspirations. By having the bourgeois enter in this alliance, it not only gave them some power, but it also helped continue to keep the working class from gaining any social standing, This in theory, allowed for the German elite class to continue making choices that would shape Germany’s history contrary to Eley’s argument. What all of these historians emphasize is the “self-mobilization from below” of key sociopolitical groups, as well as the modernity of National Socialism. By looking at the lower classes, one can see that there is an issue with this type of study. Germany tells the story from an elitist view, and by doing so, negates many theories that the lower classes (at least in German history) govern the way historians and scholars study the history of Germany.
The Sonderweg Thesis will forever be an argued topic, but the Sonderweg thesis is just another way of looking at German history. It is not right and it is not wrong it is just the different viewpoints that other historians like to focus on. By focusing on or trying to make it the only historical way to understand Germany, it draws a possibility of other histories of Germany being untold. The Sonderweg is not a constant history that stretches throughout German history, but rather an ideological belief in a people, a land, and an idea that forever brought German pride to the forefront of