| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

"Soldaten der Arbeit": Arbeitsdienste in Deutschland und den USA, 1933–1945 ("Soldiers of work": Work programs in Germany and the USA, 1933–1945). By Kiran Klaus Patel. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003. 459 pp. Paper, €49.90, ISBN 3-525-35138-0.) In German.

Kiran Klaus Patel's study purports to be a value-neutral comparison of a German and an American organization during the same fateful period: the German Arbeitsdienst, probably best known as the uniformed soldier-workers reviewed by Adolf Hitler in Leni Riefenstahl's film of the 1934 Nuremberg rally, Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the will, 1935), and the American Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), perhaps the best exemplar of New Deal idealism. Both organizations were responses to the problem of jobless youths during the Great Depression. On coming to power in January 1933 Hitler completely reorganized a voluntary work program instituted in 1931 as the Deutscher Arbeitsdienst (renamed Reichsarbeitsdienst or RAD in 1935) only weeks before Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had experimented with such a work program as governor of New York, delivered the CCC. The congruity was not lost on contemporaries. Nazi leaders almost took pride in what seemed an American emulation of their ideas, while American opponents of the New Deal saw a sinister likeness.

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