Visions of Utopia: Social Emancipation, Technological Progress, and Anticapitalism in Nazi Inventor Policy, 1933–1945

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-51
Author(s):  
Kees Gispen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Big Business ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

Inthis paper I would like to relate some of the results of my specialized research on Nazi inventor policy to themes and interpretations with which many students of the Third Reich already are familiar. One of those themes is the relationship between big business and the Nazi state. An influential hypothesis in this area centers on the notion of a “power cartel,” based on the insight that Nazi Germany was not a dictatorship in which all sectors of society were suppressed with equal force. According to the “power-cartel” interpretation, which incorporates elements of the Marxist perspective on the relationship between capitalism and National Socialism, the Third Reich was governed by an informal coalition of the Nazis, the military, and big business. This fundamental idea is then qualified by two additional observations. First, the Nazi movement is broken down into factions comprising the party, Labor Front, and SA on the one hand, and the Gestapo and SS on the other hand. The former are seen to lose power as time went by while that latter gained it, which helps explain the regime's increasing brutality and its accelerating descent into barbarism. Second, the idea of a changing balance of power is also applied to the power cartel as a whole. The point here is to account for the gradual loss of power by the military and big business. Their relatively advantageous positions in the regime’s early years steadily eroded, producing a very different weighting among the cartel’s members by the time World War II ended, without, however, ever completely destroying it.

Heterogeneous Persecution: Lesbianism and the Nazi State

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-325
Author(s):  
Samuel Clowes Huneke
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The Third ◽  
Single Frame ◽  
Female Homosexuality ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn recent years scholars have shown increasing interest in lesbianism under National Socialism. But because female homosexuality was never criminalized in Nazi Germany, excluding Austria, historians have few archival sources through which to recount this past. That lack of evidence has led to strikingly different interpretations in the scholarly literature, with some historians claiming lesbians were a persecuted group and others insisting they were not. This article presents three archival case studies, each of which epitomizes a different mode in the relationship between lesbians and the Nazi state. In presenting these cases, the article contextualizes them with twenty-seven other cases from the literature, arguing that these different modes illustrate why different women met with such radically different fates. In so doing, it attempts to bridge the divide in the scholarship, putting persecution and tolerance into a single frame of reference for understanding the lives of lesbians in the Third Reich.

The One Hundred Days

2021 ◽  
pp. 336-356
Author(s):  
Peter Fritzsche
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter studies how the transformations which occurred in less than “one hundred days” in Germany evoked the original template for the one hundred days: Napoleon Bonaparte's return from Elba and the reestablishment of the empire until his abdication in the wake of Waterloo in 1815. Each of the hundred days—Napoleon's, Franklin D. Roosevelt's, and Adolf Hitler's—recharged history. The one hundred days consolidating the New Deal and the Nazi seizure of power gave new shape to the future in the extraordinary year of 1933. Ultimately, the great achievement of the Third Reich was getting Germans to see themselves as the Nazis did: as an imperiled people who had created for themselves a new lease on collective life. Not everyone agreed with the Nazis on every point, but most adjusted to National Socialism by interpreting it in their own way, adhering to old ideas by pursuing them in new forms. As a result, more and more Germans had accepted the Third Reich. This reassembly closed off any consideration of returning to the democratic governments of the Weimar Republic; it was neither recognized as a possibility nor desired.

Alcohol and the German Army

2021 ◽  
pp. 175-196
Author(s):  
Edward B. Westermann
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Culture ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial Mentality ◽  
The Third ◽  
German Army ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter examines the idea of a comradeship that was established by sharing in intoxicating acts of obliteration that encompassed the most atrocious manifestations of human behavior. It analyses the linkage between intoxication, fury, and destruction that existed in the German army prior to the rise of National Socialism. The Wehrmacht, like its SS and police counterparts, also had a distinct organizational culture, and this culture was defined by specific beliefs, norms, and rituals, including hard drinking, that reinforced group identity and established expectations of its members. For such distinguished organizational culture, the chapter presents how this military culture established a “cult of violence” and created a trajectory for the armies of the Third Reich leading to genocide in World War II. Ultimately, the chapter investigates the racial superiority and a colonial mentality created following the maelstrom of violence inflicted on the peoples of the occupied East.

scholarly journals ILLUSION AND REALITY OF STATEHOOD: THE SEARCH FOR PARALLELS BETWEEN THE LITHUANIAN ACTIVIST FRONT AND THE ORGANISATION OF UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTST

2017 ◽  
pp. 72-82
Author(s):  
S. Jazavita
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Important Lesson ◽  
The Third ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

he present article analyses the relationship between the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and their activity parallels in order to reach the Lithuanian and the Ukrainian independence in 1941. The research focuses on the attempts of the OUN and the LAF leaders to project the future Lithuanian and Ukrainian states in the 'New Europe' headed by Germany. Reaching for counterbalance against the USSR and the Communist ideology, the LAF and the OUN organizations aimed at taking into consideration the military and political power of Germany, while Škirpa, the leader of the LAF, coordinated his activities with the OUN leaders, Stetsko, Yaryi, and Bandera. Fanatical chiefs of the Third Reich manipulated with the Lithuanians and Ukrainians' feelings of revenge against the Bolsheviks and the will to feel Europeans; however, they involved a part of Lithuanians and Ukrainians to the massacre of Jews rather than allowed to contribute to Wehrmacht fight against the USSR. Important lesson here that Lithuania and Ukraine did not obtain any independence but just became a part of the Third Reich, which controlled the so called 'New Europe' at the time.

scholarly journals Wykorzystanie środowiska naturalnego w polskich planach przyszłej wojny w latach trzydziestych XX w.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Wojtaszak
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Military Alliances ◽  
The Third ◽  
Strategic Plans ◽  
Long Line ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Military

In the last decade preceding the outbreak of World War II, the war threat of Poland was perceived by the highest political and military authorities. During the reign of Józef Piłsudski the question was asked: who was the war with? This question asked to the military and political decision makers confirmed three possibilities of the outbreak of the conflict: with Russia, with Germany and with Russia and Germany. The analyzes carried out took into account the use of the natural environment as an important element in the preparation of variants of strategic plans for the future war. Each of the plans took into account the complexity of the defense situation of the state (special, long line of borders, natural obstacles and lack thereof). The Polish military alliances were counted on. The Polish defensive war of 1939 turned out to be a conflict with two aggressors (the Third Reich and the USSR), and with the passivity of our Allies, the chances of victory were only hypothetical. The natural environment may help in the implementation of military action plans, but it does not replace the lack of military capabilities of the army.

scholarly journals Selfhood, Place, and Ideology in German Photo Albums, 1933–1945

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maiken Umbach
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Affective States ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Photo Album ◽  
Archival Record ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article explores the significance of photography and photo-album making as practices that many Germans used to record their lives during the Third Reich. Millions of photos not only offer insights into everyday life under National Socialism: mass photography itself had a transformative effect, turning seemingly mundane actions into performances for the camera and into conscious acts of self-representation. The article also considers the relationship between amateur snapshots, on the one hand, and propagandistic and commercial photographs, on the other. Identifying connections between the genres, it argues that these are best understood as two-way processes of borrowing and (re-)appropriation, in which private subjectivity and public ideology constantly commingled. Particularly important in linking the two were photos of emotional or affective states, such as relaxation, exploration, introspection, and even melancholy, which were often defined or underscored by the ways in which both civilians and soldiers positioned themselves in relation to particular landscapes. The photographic archival record is highly varied, but such variation notwithstanding, photos helped cement immersive “experience” as the basis for individual and collective identity; this was central to the ideology of the National Socialist regime, even if it never wholly controlled its meanings.

Psychiatry, politics and national socialism

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S2) ◽  
pp. 762-762
Author(s):  
S.M. Pereira ◽  
J. Bohun ◽  
S. Guimarães
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historic Review ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Memorial Sites ◽  
The Relationship

IntroductionThe misuse of psychiatry by politics during dictatorships has mainly happened in the first half of the last century during the Third Reich and Stalinist period in Soviet Union. Even today the psychiatric diagnoses may be changed in an abusive way for politic purposes as they were in the past. This may undermine the credibility of psychiatry. The psychiatric professional organizations only recently start to discuss and investigate this issue.MethodsThe authors made a literature review in historic and psychiatric books. They also visited some memorial sites were psychiatry and dictatorship were sadly connected in history. Using as main example the abuse made by psychiatrists as a politic instrument in the Third Reich period, the authors aim to make a historic review about the relationship between psychiatry and politics.ConclusionAbuse and misuse in psychiatry may also easily be done nowadays. Psychiatry is a science with not so clear boundaries, what is normal or abnormal may be sometimes unclear mainly if not seen in a serious and ethic perspective. Because of this psychiatrists should be very clear about their position in ethics, science and society.The psychiatric professional organizations should face the facts of the tragic relationship between psychiatry and politics in history, discussing this issue more openly for an appropriate understanding of the past and for preventing new errors in the future.

A war hero or a Hitler soldier?

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Pavel Gotovetsky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Committee ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Third Reich

The article is devoted to the biography of General Pavlo Shandruk, an Ukrainian officer who served as a Polish contract officer in the interwar period and at the beginning of the World War II, and in 1945 became the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian National Army fighting alongside the Third Reich in the last months of the war. The author focuses on the symbolic event of 1961, which was the decoration of General Shandruk with the highest Polish (émigré) military decoration – the Virtuti Militari order, for his heroic military service in 1939. By describing the controversy and emotions among Poles and Ukrainians, which accompanied the award of the former Hitler's soldier, the author tries to answer the question of how the General Shandruk’s activities should be assessed in the perspective of the uneasy Twentieth-Century Polish-Ukrainian relations. Keywords: Pavlo Shandruk, Władysław Anders, Virtuti Militari, Ukrainian National Army, Ukrainian National Committee, contract officer.

Sondergerichte in den besetzten polnischen Gebieten im Jahr 1939. Eine rechtsgeschichtliche Analyse

2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 323-345
Author(s):  
Konrad Graczyk
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Analysis ◽  
Military Administration ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Military

Abstract Special Courts in the Occupied Polish Territories in 1939. A Legal History Analysis. The study is devoted to the first period of activity of German special courts established in Poland in 1939. The basic scope presents the special courts of the Third Reich established on the basis of the regulation of 1933. They were a model for courts established in occupied Poland. Their creation is analyzed on the example of the Special Court in Katowitz (Sondergericht Kattowitz). Then, the activities of special courts in occupied Poland in 1939 are discussed with particular emphasis on case and penalty statistics. Attention is paid to some characteristic phenomena, such as problems with jurisdiction, differences resulting from the establishment of special courts as part of the military administration, and judgment of acts committed before the war and under Polish jurisdiction. The identified cases of violations of law in the activities of special courts in 1939 are also discussed.

Hitler, for Example: Registers of National Socialist Exemplarity in Contemporary Germany

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract This article examines whether and how the figure of Adolf Hitler in particular, and National Socialism more generally, operate as moral exemplars in today’s Germany. In conversation with similar studies about Mosely in England, Franco in Spain, and Mussolini in Italy, it seeks to advance our comparative understanding of neofascism in Europe and beyond. In Germany, legal and discursive constraints limit what can be said about the Third Reich period, while even far-right nationalists often condemn Hitler, for either the Holocaust or his military failure. Here I revise the concept of moral exemplarity as elaborated by Caroline Humphry to argue that Hitler and National Socialism do nevertheless work as contemporary exemplars, in at least three fashions: negativity, substitution, and extension. First, they stand as the most extreme markers of negative exemplarity for broad publics that understand them as illustrations of absolute moral depravity. Second, while Hitler himself is widely unpopular, Führer-substitutes such as Rudolf Hess provide alternative figures that German nationalists admire and seek to emulate. Finally, by extension to the realm of the ordinary, National Socialism introduces a cast of exemplars in the figures of loving grandfathers or anonymous fallen soldiers. The moral values for which they stand, I show, appear to be particularly significant for young nationalists. An extended, more open-ended notion of exemplarity, I conclude, can offer important insights about the lingering afterlife of fascist figures in the moral life of European nationalists today.

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