ded in the period of 1871-1933, a period of great upheavals and disruptions within the German society. This included the establishment of imperial Germany, World War I, the German defeat and its aftermath i.e. the fall of the monarchy, revolution, the impact of the Versailles Treaty, and the economic troubles brought on by inflation, Germany's ill-fated experience with democracy under the Weimar Republic, the Great Depression. During those six decades, German society underwent such a series of violent that came to a boiling point in 1933. National Socialism may be viewed as Germany's response to conditions of extreme stress caused by specific historical circumstances. Though other states at that time were also affected by chaotic conditions, Germany major reason for turning to totalitarianism resides in the failure to integrate traditional institutions with the requirements of modern industrial civilization. In Germany o!
             r Italy, for example, the social fabric was far more fragile than it was in the Western Democracy, where decades of socioeconomic conflicts had forced traditional institutions into more successful accommodations with modern industrial civilizations. In addition, neither Italy or Germany became a unified nation until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and while both grappled with the psychological problem of identity; powerful industrial changes eroded ancient traditions and institutions that were needed as a stable foundation for the future.
             It is understandable that historians should wish to go back into the past to discover the sources of National Socialist thought, in the hope of establishing a clear line between Hitler and whatever predecessors he may have had. There is little doubt, however, that in many cases this process has degenerated into what a times amounts to any almost frantic ransacking of Germany's past to find anyone who sounds as though he might have had some connec...