“Deutsche, werdet Mitglieder des Vaterlandes!”

[The German Navy League 1898 – 34.]

This thesis constitutes the first comprehensive study of the German Navy League from its foundation in 1898 by middlemen of Krupp and the Imperial Naval Office to its „voluntary“ disbanding in 1934. With more than one million members, the German Navy League was the largest and one of the most powerful (radical) nationalist pressure groups in Wilhelmine Germany. Diziols cultural historical study focuses on the topics of (1) political mentalities and nationalist symbolism, (2) possibilities of participation of individual members on the local, regional, and national level, and (3) on continuities across the historical breaks of 1914/18 as well as 1933. For the first time, he analyses the contents, forms, functions, and effects of „navalism“ in the Wilhelmine middle classes, a term he defines as a mental phenomenon parallel to militarism.

(Title currently out of print)