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1 " Modern historical research in East Germany is still conducted in the light of Dmitrov's definition of fascism as 'the openly terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialistic elements of Finance-Capital'. No doubt this definition had a function and a degree of plausibility in 1935, but today, in view of the later development of Nazi Germany, it can have only very limited use as a starting point for an investigation, and can certainly not be regarded as an answer to the problem of the relationship between politics and economics under National Socialism. "
― , Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class
2 " The radical nature of the primacy of politics under National Socialism, however, was rooted in the specific historical disintegration of bourgeois German society (1929-33), of German capitalism (1936-8), and of international politics in the 1930s. The immense political scope of the National Socialist government was not based on the confidence of a politically and economically homogeneous society; on the contrary, it was a result precisely of the disintegration of society. The coincidence of this with the collapse of the international order in the 1930s enabled the National Socialist state to achieve a degree of independence of society which is unparalleled in history. "
