Legacies of the Third Reich: Concentration Camps and Out-group Intolerance

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (2) ◽  
pp. 573-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN HOMOLA ◽  
MIGUEL M. PEREIRA ◽  
MARGIT TAVITS
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Geographic Sorting

We explore the long-term political consequences of the Third Reich and show that current political intolerance, xenophobia, and voting for radical right-wing parties are associated with proximity to former Nazi concentration camps in Germany. This relationship is not explained by contemporary attitudes, the location of the camps, geographic sorting, the economic impact of the camps, or their current use. We argue that cognitive dissonance led those more directly exposed to Nazi institutions to conform with the belief system of the regime. These attitudes were then transmitted across generations. The evidence provided here contributes both to our understanding of the legacies of historical institutions and the sources of political intolerance.

scholarly journals Neurosciences in the Third Reich: from Ivory Tower to Death Camps

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael I. Shevell
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Physical Disabilities ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The Political ◽  
Racial Hygiene ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract: It is commonly thought that the horrific medical abuses occurring during the era of the Third Reich were limited to fringe physicians acting in extreme locales such as the concentration camps. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that there was a widespread perversion of medical practice and science that extended to mainstream academic physicians. Scientific thought, specifically the theories of racial hygiene, and the political conditions of a totalitarian dictatorship, acted symbiotically to devalue the intrinsic worth to society of those individuals with mental and physical disabilities. This devaluation served to foster the medical abuses which occurred. Neurosciences in the Third Reich serves as a backdrop to highlight what was the slippery slope of medical practice during that era. Points on this slippery slope included the “dejudification” of medicine, unethical experimentation in university clinics, systematic attempts to sterilize and euthanasize targeted populations, the academic use of specimens obtained through such programs and the experimental atrocities within the camps.

Rituals of Humiliation

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-64
Author(s):  
Edward B. Westermann
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
German Society ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Abusive Behavior ◽  
The Third ◽  
Killing Fields ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter evaluates the significance of ritual and symbolism to the construction and manifestation of power under National Socialism. It underlines the importance of practices such as the mammoth party rallies at Nuremberg, the universal displays of the swastika on flags, pins, and armbands and the ubiquitous use of “Heil Hitler” as the standard greeting of the Third Reich under the Nazi regime. The chapter also contends that the creation of Nazi power was accomplished in no small measure by the use of ritual, and, in fact, ritual in the Third Reich served as an expression of “social power” that extended into virtually all aspects of German society. These celebratory events of Nazi power involved daily acts of verbal or physical humiliation of Jews, communists, and socialists, as well as organized and exemplary episodes of abusive behavior. Ultimately, the chapter studies the symbiotic relationship between violence, competition, and male comradeship and how it became manifest in the actions, rituals, and celebratory practices of Nazi paramilitary organizations through acts of humiliation by SS and policemen on the streets, in the concentration camps, and in the killing fields.

Suicide in Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933-9

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 628-648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Goeschel
Keyword(s):  
Political History ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
And Control ◽  
Good And Evil

Too often histories of the concentration camps tend to be ignorant of the wider political context of nazi repression and control. This article tries to overcome this problem. Combining legal, social and political history, it contributes to a more thorough understanding of the changing relationship between the camps as places of extra-legal terror and the judiciary, between nazi terror and the law. It argues that the conflict between the judiciary and the SS was not a conflict between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, as existing accounts claim. Rather, it was a power struggle for jurisdiction over the camps. Concentration camp authorities covered up the murders of prisoners as suicides to prevent judicial investigations. This article also looks at actual suicides in the pre-war camps, to highlight individual inmates’ reactions to life within the camps. The article concludes that the history of the concentration camps needs to be firmly integrated into the history of nazi terror and the Third Reich.

Hitler's Concentration Camps—An Examination of Conscience

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46
Author(s):  
Eugen Kogon ◽  
R. A. Gutman
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German People

Something the human mind can hardly grasp took place among the German people during the twelve years of the Third Reich. In that corner of Bavarian-Austrian earth that lies between the rivers Inn and Danube, Hitler's home, the legend of the twelve terrible nights (Rauhnaechte) between Christmas and Epiphany is still alive. The legend tells us that wild hordes ride on horses through the air during these nights, bringing storms, unrest and destruction. The people say that it is dangerous to be outdoors alone, lest one be picked up and carried away into the air and made to join the wild riders above.

scholarly journals Wysiedlenie widziane oczami dziecka z Zamojszczyzny

2020 ◽  
pp. 426-440
Author(s):  
Barbara Stelingowska
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
Indelible Mark ◽  
Population Displacement ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Second World

The article undertakes the topic of forced population displacement seen through the eyes of a child from Zamojszczyzna along with war-time fates of Polish families deported duringthe Second World War. The history of Zamojszczyzna lands is composed of tragic experiences of people forced out of their family households, imprisoned in the transit camps, deported to be involuntary labourers in the Third Reich, or murdered in concentration camps KL Auschwitz and KL Lublin (Majdanek). The survivors had to carry on throughout their lives with an indelible mark left by war-time childhood reflected by the name “a Child of Zamojszczyna” (the said status was granted to persons who were prisoners of the transit camps in Zamość and Zwierzyniec [solely children until the age of fourteen] and those imprisoned in concentration camps [for at least one day]).

Blurring the Boundaries of Genre, Gender, and Geopolitics: Ruth Page and Harald Kreutzberg's Transatlantic Collaboration in the 1930s

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joellen A. Meglin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Distance ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Artistic Director

In 1933, the year Hitler was named chancellor of Germany, Ruth Page and Harald Kreutzberg launched a “new and rather surprising partnership” with a joint recital in Chicago. Page and Kreutzberg were, on the surface, unlikely artistic collaborators: she, an American ballerina and he, an exponent of the German new dance. Nevertheless, their partnership lasted four years—from 1932 through 1936—a fairly long term considering the usual obstacles to collaboration magnified by physical distance. With Chicago as the focal point they toured the Midwest and other regions of the United States, Japan, and Canada. The collaboration offered the two artists a number of advantages. Page had certain difficulties to surmount in achieving her goal of becoming a choreographic entrepreneur in the post-Diaghilev international ballet world: besides being a woman—a decided disadvantage when it came to being taken seriously as a choreographer, artistic director, and impresario in the ballet world—she lived in Chicago, outside the dance mecca of New York. She could parlay her collaboration with Kreutzberg into a cosmopolitan, modernist identity, thus preempting the threat of consignment to Midwestern obscurity. Kreutzberg, for his part, was in need of a continuous and widening stream of performance venues in which to develop his unique gifts as a solo performer; moreover, he had to contend with the rising fascism and homophobic militancy of the Third Reich as a gay man whose identity was antithetical to the nation-state of which he was ultimately to become a pawn.

scholarly journals A Devil of the Details: The Life and Crimes of Nazi Wilhelm Frick

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Kost
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Instrumental Role

Wilhelm Frick, the Minister of the Interior in the Third Reich, has never garnered the same notoriety as some of his Nazi peers—in spite of the fact that he played an instrumental role in Jewish persecution. From his co-authoring of the Nuremberg Laws to his involvement in the Third Reich’s police and concentration camps, Frick’s background in law, policing, and politics helped him become a lethal and influential tool for the Nazi Party. This paper argues that Frick served as a judicial architect of the Holocaust and facilitator of the Final Solution, who has—somehow—remained   largely unknown.

scholarly journals „Noc kryształowa” z 9/10 listopada 1938 roku i „ostateczne rozwiązanie kwestii żydowskiej” na Śląsku Opolskim w latach II wojny światowej

2009 ◽  
pp. 103-113
Author(s):  
Andrzej Hanich
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Main Body ◽  
World War ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The article describes the situation of the Jewish Judaic community in Opole Silesia under the Third Reich. It shows also its territorial distribution during the inter-war period. The main body of the article consists of a description of the events in Opole Silesia during so called Crystal Night on 9/10th November 1938, both as far as that action itself is concerned and in terms of the reaction to it. In the section dealing with the later years of World War II, the author points out the difficulties, faced by the Catholic clergy in providing assistance to the Jews, as well as indicates the fate met by the Jews from other parts of Europe whom the war years took to the concentration camps on the soil of Opole Silesia.

scholarly journals Neuroscience in Nazi Europe Part III: Victims of the Third Reich

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 729-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Zeidman ◽  
Daniel Kondziella
Keyword(s):  
Dark Period ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Viktor Frankl ◽  
The Third ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Personal Rights ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Arthur Simons

In Part I, neuroscience collaborators with the Nazis were discussed, and in Part II, neuroscience resistors were discussed. In Part III, we discuss the tragedy regarding european neuroscientists who became victims of the Nazi onslaught on “Non-Aryan” doctors. Some of these unfortunate neuroscientists survived Nazi concentration camps, but most were murdered. We discuss the circumstances and environment which stripped these neuroscientists of their profession, then of their personal rights and freedom, and then of their lives. We include a background analysis of anti-Semitism and Nazism in their various countries, then discuss in depth seven exemplary neuroscientist Holocaust victims; including germans Ludwig Pick, Arthur Simons, and Raphael Weichbrodt, Austrians Alexander Spitzer and Viktor Frankl, and Poles Lucja Frey and Wladyslaw Sterling. By recognizing and remembering these victims of neuroscience, we pay homage and do not allow humanity to forget, lest this dark period in history ever repeat itself.

Coercion and Consent in Nazi Germany

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
National Elections ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

This lecture discusses three central propositions to a new consensus that the Third Reich was a ‘dictatorship by consent’. The first proposition states that the Nazis did not seize power; rather, they won it legally and by consent. The second is that the Nazi repression, which was exercised through the Gestapo and the concentration camps, was on a small scale and did not actually affect most of the population. The third proposition discussed in this lecture is that the overwhelming popularity of the regime was demonstrated by the staggeringly successful results it achieved in national elections and plebiscites.

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