The Shoe under National Socialism

Winner of the Hedwig Hintze Prize 2010 of the German Historical Association (Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands)

Politics and consumerism: the development of the »modern shoe« in National Socialist Germany.

Why did the shoe in Nazi Germany become an object of scientific research? Did this imply technological innovation? How did the National Socialists control shoe fashions? Are the human experiments on prisoners on the shoe testing track at the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen in any way connected with the use of early synthetic materials in German shoes? Why did the SS in Auschwitz and other extermination camps requisition the infamous »mountains of shoes« and what happened to these in the German war economy?
In her product history Anne Sudrow addresses those among other questions. She examines the emergence of the »modern shoe« in Germany and compares it with Great Britain and the USA - using new archival sources from all three countries. As a method she develops the »historical product line analysis«. Thus the material culture of footwear and the relationship of people with their everyday objects unter National Socialism can be explained not only in their political, economic and scientific context, but also categorized in relation to international developments.

The Author
Anne Sudrow, born in 1970, is research fellow at the Centre of Contemporary History in Potsdam. Previously, academic researcher and lecturer at the University of Technology, Munich, and the University of Göttingen.