The Third Reich

This is a draft section of a chapter in my forthcoming Ph.D., in which I explore the anti-Semitic theories and theological views of 19th-century German preacher and politician Adolf Stoecker. I examine Stoecker's influence on Nazism, and suggest that whilst Stoecker certainly influenced Nazi ideology, it is a mistake to view his own anti-Semitism through the lens of the Holocaust.

Dorothee Wein, Volker Mall und Harald Roth dokumentieren 62 Jahre nach Ende der NS-Barbarei erstmals den Bau des Militärflughafens bei Hailfingen/Tailfingen, auf dessen Gelände später das Außenlager des KZ Natzweiler im Elsass errichtet wurde. Doch sie zeigen noch mehr. Sie folgen den Spuren von 1945 bis heute und beschreiben den Umgang der Justiz und der Bevölkerung mit den Verbrechen, die im Zusammenhang mit dem Bau des Flugplatzes und im KZ-Hailfingen/Tailfingen passierten.

Researchers have long questioned how debunked myths such as the blood libel – the notion that Jews used Christian blood in their ceremonies – were able to persist for so long. This essay explains the social function of such myths in one context by presenting a public debate on Judaism carried out in the pages of the two leading Christian periodicals of the early eighteenth century in Germany. One journal put forth the orthodox Lutheran viewpoint, the other that of “Pietist” reformers. Through these journals, a battle took place for control of the Lutheran church, and thus for much of public life in Protestant Germany. Because Pietists believed Jews to hold a special place in God’s plan, they sought to rehabilitate Jews to their Christian readers and to argue for better conditions for Jewish communities. Orthodox Lutheran leaders quickly identified Pietists’ “Jew-friendly” policies as an Achilles’ heel. To attack Pietists, the orthodoxy dredged up and re-publicized centuries-old anti-Judaic propaganda, negative images that the orthodoxy linked to Pietists. Representatives of the Lutheran orthodoxy thus deployed anti-Judaic stereotypes in order to shore up their own church-political hegemony. Through this media manipulation, the Lutheran state church was able to seed fear among Christian readers and to argue that Pietist reformers and Jews were pollutants that needed to be cleansed from church and society.

Education in Nazi Germany examines how Nazism took shape both in the schools, in particular through curricular and textbook changes, and in the youth groups, in which German boys and girls were socialized in accordance with the regime's ideological aims. Offering a compelling new analysis of Nazi Educational policy, this book brings to the forefront an often-overlooked aspect of the Third Reich

This article contains a set of reflections on the impact of the cultural-historical turn on the writing of the history of National Socialism.  It first traces the archaeology of the turn in diverse intellectual currents that coalesced in the 1980s and 1990s; it offers examples of how the historiography of the Third Reich has been enriched by these approaches; and it reflects on the ways in which cultural history methods  might feed into ongoing and future research.

It is part of a forum feature on the subject curated by the journal editors.

The Doi: for this paper is: https://doi.org/10.1515/vfzg-2017-0013 - this should click through to the text.

The English language version of the paper is appended here: please, however, cite the published German version should you wish to do so.

Indagando i rapporti tra Terzo Reich e mondo animale, questo libro mostra come i nazisti abbiano sfruttato simbologie animali per ribadire e diffondere il loro sistema di differenze razziali. I nazisti tendevano a risolvere i problemi etici riducendoli al principio biologico della lotta per la sopravvivenza. In quest'ottica, i predatori, simbolicamente legati ai funzionari di partito, venivano esaltati, mentre i nemici venivano associati alle prede. Il libro inoltre mette in luce alcuni dei paradossi più stridenti dell'ideologia nazista, nella quale promozione del vegetarianesimo e leggi per tutelare gli animali coesistevano con un metodico sistema di sterminio dell'essere umano. In queste pagine il lettore troverà non solo un originale approfondimento su alcuni aspetti dell'ideologia nazista, ma anche l'attenta ricostruzione di un capitolo poco conosciuto nella storia dei diritti degli animali.

1933 yılı itibariyle Almanya’da Yahudilerin nüfusu yüzde 1’den azdı. Bununla birlikte, Nazi propagandası, Almanya’daki Yahudilerin olağanüstü zenginliklerin varlığına inanıyordu ve bunun da, milli servetin yüzde 20’sine kadar yükseldiği tahmin ediliyordu. Bu makalede, müttefik askeri yönetimler için 1945 yılından sonra vergi tahsilatına ilişkin veriler kullanılarak bu iddialar üzerinde yeniden bir değerlendirme yapılmaktadır. Bu kapsamda; makul varsayımlar altında, Almanya özelinde reel sermaye stokunun Yahudilerin sahip olduğu pay ile nüfus payı geniş ölçüde eşleştirilmiş olup, yüzde 1,6 skorluk bir üst tahminde bulunulmuştur.

Partisanas. La mujer en la resistencia armada contra el fascismo y la ocupación alemana (1936-1945) Barcelona, VIRUS Editorial, 2015 pp. 519. Cuando han pasado casi veinte años desde la primera edición en castellano y poco menos de treinta desde que salió a la luz en Alemania, se ha realizado una nueva edición revisada y corregida de Partisanas. Se trata de una obra referencial que, posiblemente, marcó un antes y un después en la historiografía, debido a que sacó del ostracismo la participación de las mujeres en la lucha contra el fas-cismo y el nazismo. Si bien es cierto que desde su primera edición, allá por 1989, hay en la actualidad mayor número de estudios acerca del papel de las mujeres en la los diferentes periodos históricos, sobre todo gracias a la historiografía fe-minista, no lo es menos que las mujeres siguen estando relegadas, en el mejor de los casos, a un segundo plano. Esto es más evidente aún si cabe cuando se trata de estudios sobre liberación nacional o lucha antifascista. Ahí las mujeres, salvo honrosas excepciones, son silenciadas a pesar de la participación que han tenido, tal y como se puede comprobar en diversos periodos históricos como la lucha llevada a cabo por los pueblos indígenas contra la conquista del «nuevo mun-do», los movimientos independentistas de las colonias americanas, la revolución sandinista o en la actualidad las mujeres kurdas, por citar unos pocos ejemplos. Muchas mujeres tomaron las armas contra el fascismo. No obstante, tuvie-ron que enfrentarse a su vez a las diversas organizaciones revolucionarias y a sus compañeros militantes quienes en demasiadas ocasiones, debido a su visión pa-triarcal de la sociedad, no las llegaron a considerar, salvo excepciones, como sus iguales e incluso las quisieron situar en la retaguardia porque el frente, decían, no era lugar para ellas. Primero era ganar al fascismo, después, en todo caso, ya le llegaría el turno a la cuestión de la mujer. Es por ello que todas aquellas mu-jeres que se enfrentaron a sus compañeros para que fuesen vistas como iguales pueden ser consideradas como la punta de lanza de la vanguardia revolucionaria de la época. El libro de la periodista e historiadora austriaca tiene dos grandes bloques, dedicados a la resistencia armada en Europa occidental y a la resistencia judía en la Europa del este, en donde se ve claramente lo mencionado. Acerca de la

The volume is in fact the last part of a trilogy that Evans has dedicated to Nazi Germany. As it approaches the most dramatic period in the history of Germany, the Second World War, it is also the most dramatic of them bearing witness of a time when the regime has shown the cloven hoof. In fact, many Germans have pretended after the downfall of the regime to have been unaware of Nazi crimes. That in case of many of them this was an empty pretence is amply demonstrated in the volume. The volume is structured in seven parts dealing with the period of amazing military victories by the Wehrmacht and the imposition of a new racial order in the conquered territories, the start of the Barbarossa Campaign, the infamous Wannsee Conference and the “Final Solution”, the new German order forced upon Europe, the changes in the fortunes of German war, the German moralities and the downfall of the empire.

This book introduces the lay reader to the problem of how to read Hitler's notoriously turgid prose by taking key short extracts and undertaking a close reading of them.  It seeks to offer a reading of the text that moves discussion of its contents beyond the 'Intentionalist-structuralist' debate that governed previous interpretations of the book.  At its core is an examination of how, despite the difficulties associated with interpreting Hitler's writing, we can detect the presence of a genocidal mentality and an implicitly genocidal ideology.  Chapters discuss: 1. Why Read Hitler?  2. The Politics of Genre  3. Language and Politics  4. History  5. War, Revolution and National Rebirth  6. The Jews  7. Eugenics  8. Modernity  9. Expansion  10. Leadership, Propaganda, Mobilisation.

The preface to the 2014 edition of the book, which discussed the text against the background of the expiry of the copyright of Mein Kampf at the end of 2015, is attached here with the permission of Granta Books.

Mirosław Sikora, Die Waffenschmiede des »Dritten Reiches«. Die deutsche Rüstungsindustrie in Oberschlesien während des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Hrsg. von Helmut Maier, Essen: Klartext 2014, 591 S. (= Bochumer Studien zur Technik-und Umweltgeschichte, 3), EUR 39,95 [ISBN 978-3-8375-1190-1] Besprochen von Roman Töppel: München, E-

Every invading army conveys its message first through brutal force, guns, shells, and bullets, and only later occupies itself with explaining to the locals that in fact they come in peace and providing reasons it might be a good thing to be occupied. Communication with the occupied population is always conducted through language specialists who either come from within the army itself and who have cultural knowledge and foreign language skills, or those who are recruited on the ground. Those who come from the second group usually experience endless problems as they can be seen to be collaborators. Despite the outright genocidal nature of the campaign the Wehrmacht unleashed in the USSR in June 1941, the Germans needed to address the issue of how to talk to people.
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030270360

This is the student work (later reviewd and published) of an Seminaire containing the making of an remembrance site in an Hamburg district called "Hammerbrook" (which former structures were destroyed during the WWII bombing and wasn't rebuild in that form). - This particular work is the first of three, which consider the history of this district in cases of the social-political-history and the perceiption of it's "undergoing" due the "firestorm" 1943. The second paper focusses the social-politically circumstances of this former left-wing (socialdemocrat & communist) district due the Weimar Republic and early stage of the Third Reich times.

Despite its disapproval of the modernization of the woman’s role in the society, the
NSDAP could not prevent the consolidation of a female leadership within the party. This
was until 1945 in charge of leading the Reich´s woman´s corporation, organized in the
NS-Frauenschaft and the Deutsches Frauenwerk.
After a brief introduction into the structure of female organizations within the NSDAP,
the article aims at giving an overview over the recruitment and training of the women
cadres.
The last part of the article is based on a wide range of biographical sources and deals
with the socio-biographical and motivational profiles of the National Socialist female
leadership.
The article aims at proving the direct female influence on the establishment of a
woman´s leadership within the Nazi Party – in terms of defining its competences as well as
its political role and function for the women in the Third Reich. The article also shows that
the possibilities of female political participation within the Third Reich were not as limited
as the Nazi-propaganda would suggest. Instead they expanded, particularly through the
nazification of previously conservative and nationalist female political engagement.

Članek na podlagi arhivskih virov, ustnih pričevanj, slikovnega gradiva in dokumentacije iz zasebnih zbirk analizira raznarodovalni program nemškega okupatorja v obdobju štiriletne okupacije zdravilišča Rogaška Slatina. Glavni cilj nacistov je bila čim hitrejša vpeljava raznarodovalne in germanizatorske politike, ki so jo na Spodnjem Štajerskem izvajali Štajerska domovinska zveza, tajna državna policija, orožništvo in še nekateri drugi organi. Zlasti leti 1941 in 1942 sta v zdravilišču minili v znamenju aretacij, mučenj, nasilnih preiskav in zaplemb premoženja, izgonov ter internacij v nemška koncentracijska taborišča in okrožne ali okrajne zapore, kjer so bile slatinske žrtve usmrčene. Preostale prebivalce so politično, narodnostno, rasno in dednozdravstveno temeljito pregledali, jim na podlagi ocen dodelili legitimacije in jih skozi vrtce, šole ter s prirejanjem jezikovnih tečajev in političnih zborovanj podvrgli brezkompromisnemu ponemčevanju.

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DENATIONALIZING AND GERMANIZING NAZI POLICY IN OCCUPIED ROGAŠKA SLATINA (1941–1945): Drawing on archival sources, oral testimonies, pictorial material and documentation from private collections, the article analyses Nazi denationalization politics in the period of four-year occupation of health-spa resort Rogaška Slatina. The main objective of Nazis was a quick implementation of denationalization and Germanization policy, which was in the land of Lower Styria implemented mostly by Styria Homeland Association, Secret State Police, Gendarmerie and some other agencies. In the health-spa resort, both 1941 and 1942 have passed in a sign of arrests, torment, violent house searches and confiscations of property, expulsions and internments into Nazi concentration camps, district and regional prisons, where the victims from Rogaška Slatina waited for their final execution. Others have gone through thorough political, ethnic, genetic and racial examination, and depending on their grades, they were given legitimations. Through kindergartens, schools, language courses and political rallies they were subducted to uncompromising Germanization.

Účelem tohoto příspěvku je podat základní přehled právní úpravy sexuálních trestných činů a jejich stíhání v nacistickém Německu v letech 1933-1945. Nacisté právě v této oblasti provedli několik významných změn a zostřili represi trestných činů sexuální povahy a zavedli dokonce některé nové skutkové podstaty. Předložený příspěvek pojednává nejprve o základní charakteristice nacistického trestního práva, aby čtenář pochopil, na jakých principech bylo vůbec založeno. Poté je věnována pozornost jednotlivým skutkovým podstatám sexuálních trestných činů zakotvených v německém trestním zákoníku z roku 1871. Podrobně příspěvek pojednává o nově zavedeném trestném činu „prznění rasy“, který byl stíhán dle zákona na ochranu německé krve a německé cti z roku 1935. Protože se předním nacistům nezdálo trestní právo dostatečně „tvrdé“ a efektivní v boji se zločinností, tak se ve třicátých letech minulého století začala připravovat velká trestněprávní reforma. Výrazně zpřísněno mělo být i postihování sexuálních deliktů, k čemuž však již vzhledem k dalším událostem nikdy nedošlo.

The purpose of this chapter is to give a basic overview of regulation of sexual crime and its prosecution in Nazi Germany in the years 1933-1945. Nazis in this area have made some significant changes and sharpen the repression of crimes of a sexual nature and have even introduced some new facts. This chapter first discusses the basic characteristics of a Nazi criminal law so that the reader would understand the principles of its basis. Then, attention is paid to the individual facts of sex crime embeded in the German Criminal Code of 1871. The chapter discusses in detail the newly introduced crime offense "defiling race", which was prosecuted under the Act on the Protection of German Blood and German Honor from 1935. As the leading Nazis did not feel the criminal law "hard" enough and effective in the fight against crime, in the 30’s of the last century a preparation of large crime law reform started. It should be considerably more strict prosecution of sexual offenses, which didn’t come into action due to other events and development.
Vytisknout

ESTICA: Editoriale culturale, politice, recenzii (7 Octombrie 2014) http://www.estica.eu/article/revolutia-conservatoare-germana-si-mostenirea-sa/ În perioada dintre Primul război mondial şi stabilirea celui de-al Treilea Reich, criza economică, politică şi socială care a lovit subit Germania -rezultat al înfrângerii acesteia în războia dat naştere unei mişcări cunoscute sub numele de "Revoluţia Conservatoare" sau şi mai bine cunoscută drept "Mişcarea Revoluţionară Conservatoare", iar membrii acesteia erau denumiţi fie "revoluţionari conservatori" fie "neoconservatori".

Auszug:
Die (Lebens-)Geschichte Miron Goldsteins und seines Aegyptologischen Verlages liegt, abgesehen von den hier geworfenen Schlaglichtern auf einzelne Episoden, immer noch weitgehend im Dunkeln.  Sie verdeutlicht aber, dass die Geschichte der deutschen Ägyptologie von den Zeitläufen, auf unterschiedlichsten Ebenen, beeinträchtigt worden ist und sich hinter einem so banal scheinenden schwarzen Strich in ägyptologischen Fachpublikationen menschliche Schicksale verbergen.
Die Ägyptologie hat in jüngster Zeit – zu Recht – damit begonnen, ihre eigene Geschichte zu erforschen und dabei die Menschen hinter den Werktiteln in den Blick zu nehmen, dies sollte nicht auf Fachvertreter und Wissenschaftler beschränkt bleiben.

This article explores the politics of performing Wagner outdoors, focusing on the Waldoper in Sopot, Poland, and its operations under the Third Reich. Festival literature suggests that the Reich combined climatic deterministic logic with established open-air theatrical practice to implicate experiencing Wagnerian sounds outdoors as inculcating völkisch character in Poles, positioning the festival within the Reich’s imperial mission. However, this vision from ‘on high’ was undermined by bureaucratic disorganization and inefficiency, much like other Nazi artistic projects. The article concludes with a discussion of the post-war afterlives of the Waldoper and its attendant mythologies.

Although it has been claimed that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's controversial 1933 essay on "The Church and the Jewish Question" is riddled with inconsistencies, I argue that the essay is entirely consistent at least on the issue of church action with respect to the state. Seeing this requires recognizing that the essay is driven by the logic of the two kingdoms, that Lutheran way of understanding God's action in two dimensions of life, the spiritual and temporal.

This book was written by Leslie Blau (Blau László). It is a translation of the English "Bonyhad: A Destroyed Community" printed by Blau in 1994 (New York, New York). This translation into Hebrew was edited by Reuven Chaim Klein in 2010. It has yet to be published.ג

Driver drowsiness is a major cause of severe accidents, many of which involve a single vehicle lane departure. The objective of the experiment described in this paper is to determine the relationships between drowsiness, lane departure events (LDE) and effects of a warning system. While in case of driver distraction the impact of such a warning system can be tested in real traffic, for reasons of safety (and reproducibility), a laboratory-based driving simulator is being used in this project. The experiments were conducted with a cohort of 63 healthy male subjects aged 22 to 27 driving for about 2.5 hrs in a stimuli-deprived scenario with a six-fold repetition under carefully controlled conditions. Several hundreds micro-sleep episodes were identified in the 53 successful trials by electrooculogram and video signal and confirmed by behavioral analysis; more than 800 lane departure warnings (LDW) occurred in the assisted sub-cohort of 17 drivers. A combined analysis of the LDE with and without LDW shows significant reduction in number, time, departure length and out-of-lane area for the assisted subjects. The timing and design of the warning could furthermore prevent almost 85% of the lane departure events caused by sleepiness.

This review discusses Rousseau's concepts of social contract and general will in his work "The Social Contract" and contrasts those views with the constitutional principles of representation and individual rights found in the United States and other democratic republics.

Robbing the Jews reveals the mechanisms by which the Nazis and their allies confiscated Jewish property; the book demonstrates the close relationship between robbery and the Holocaust. The spoliation evolved in intensifying steps. The Anschluss and Kristallnacht in 1938 reveal a dynamic tension between pressure from below and state-directed measures. In Western Europe, the economic persecution of the Jews took the form of legal decrees and administrative measures. In Eastern Europe, authoritarian governments adopted the Nazi program that excluded Jews from the economy and seized their property, based on indigenous antisemitism and plans for ethnically homogenous nation-states. In the occupied East, property was collected at the killing sites-the most valuable objects were sent to Berlin, whereas items of lesser value supported the local administration and rewarded collaborators. At several key junctures, robbery acted as a catalyst for genocide, accelerating the progression from pogrom to mass murder.

Robbing the Jews reveals the mechanisms by which the Nazis and their allies confiscated Jewish property; the book demonstrates the close relationship between robbery and the Holocaust. The spoliation evolved in intensifying steps. The Anschluss and Kristallnacht in 1938 reveal a dynamic tension between pressure from below and state-directed measures. In Western Europe, the economic persecution of the Jews took the form of legal decrees and administrative measures. In Eastern Europe, authoritarian governments adopted the Nazi program that excluded Jews from the economy and seized their property, based on indigenous antisemitism and plans for ethnically homogeneous nation-states. In the occupied East, property was collected at the killing sites – the most valuable objects were sent to Berlin, whereas items of lesser value supported the local administration and rewarded collaborators. At several key junctures, robbery acted as a catalyst for genocide, accelerating the progression from pogrom to mass murder.

Cambridge University Press, 2008

The book opens with the author's vivid description of her life in a traditional family in Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s, her studies at the Hebrew Gymnasium in Kovno, and the dramatic turn in Gitta’s life as a result of the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Only a few days before the first gruesome massacres of the Lithuanian Jews, Gitta and her family are expelled from their home by the Soviets. Although they escape the claws of the murderous Nazis and Lithuanians, their destiny takes them to the terrifying banks of the Arctic Ocean.

Gitta’s account of life in Siberia is an extraordinary description of her confrontation with the brutal climate and the flinty Soviet authorities -- but also of an establishment of a Jewish community which, with enormous effort, attempted to reconstruct the spiritual-communal life it had known in Lithuania. The kingpins of this new Jewish community were Gitta’s father and the mother of her future husband, who taught the youth Hebrew, organized daily prayers, constructed Jewish calendars and initiated other activities.

Sixteen years later, following the long-awaited release from Siberian exile, the author and her husband (my father) in Vilna attempt to gain permission to immigrate to Israel. When their struggle runs into a brick wall, they express their longing for the Jewish homeland by naming their children with Jewish names and teaching them the Hebrew language openly. After thirteen years of tedious efforts, their stubborn struggle succeeds in triumph. The book ends with their landing in the Promised Land.

As the editor of this work, I have added to the memoirs a research wrapping of relevant footnotes and a professional article at the appendix dealing with the deportation of the Lithuanian Jews, based on NKVD documents that I uncovered at the special archives in Vilna. This extensive research material complements the author's memoirs from a scientific perspective and reveals for readers and researchers quite a fascinating piece of Jewish history that has disappeared until now into the shadow of Holocaust stories.

System of forced and directed labour was characteristic for protectorate labour law. In order for this system to work effectively, it was necessary to create some required effective managing and controlling mechanisms. Of major importance was a newly created system of employment offices and their subsidiaries which was directed by the Ministry of Social and Health Administration, later by the Ministry of Economy and Labour. Employment offices constituted one of the most important and key instruments in the process of performing directed and forced labour. During World War II, their tasks and authority gradually grew and at the end of the war they applied basically to all areas related to work performance. Although the employment offices belonged to the so-called autonomous (Czech) administration, their leading positions were taken by German officers which had a considerable influence on their actual activity. The Ministry of Social and Health Administration (later Ministry of Economy and Labour) represented an institution where legal regulations for the labour law area were made. Since 1942, mostly German officers were in charge of this area amongst whom can be named primarily Dr. Walter Bertsch and Dr. Wilhelm Dennler. German office workers transferred here from the Office of Reich Protector, thus they directly contributed to creating drafts of legislation.