In this study I have stressed three broad themes concerning sociology, technology and society, and totalitarianism in power under Hitler. First, both the form in which modernity arrived and the cultural responses to it, one of which was reactionary modernism, were deeply shaped by the peculiarities of modern German history and society. Reactionary modernism was a specifically German response to a universal dilemma of societies facing the consequences of the industrial and French revolutions: How can national traditions be reconciled with modern culture, modern technology, and modern political and economic institutions? I view this study as an exercise in interpretive historical sociology that sets forth universal dilemmas confronting modernizing societies, examines how different social actors respond to these dilemmas with complexes of meaning that form the basis of their social and political action, and finally, traces the impact of these responses on the course of historical and political events. Within the ongoing debate over the nature of the Nazi regime, this study lends support to the “intentionalists,” that is, those observers who insist that Nazi ideology, however base, was politically decisive.

Political sociology that is interpretive and historical is necessarily a pluralistic undertaking. Events cannot be reduced to any single variable or factor. This study has focused on politics, culture, and ideology. No monocausality is thereby intended.