The Sources of Hitler's Power

1942 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-408
Author(s):  
Waldemar Gurian

Are the Germans really behind the Nazi Government? Despite— or because of?—the steadily rising flood of books dealing with the Third Reich this question is answered in most different ways. There is no agreement concerning the relations between the German people and the National Socialist regime. But one's attitude towards the conduct of the war and the post-war problems is, to a large extent, determined by the opinion that one holds about these relations. Therefore, some remarks about the different answers which are given to the question: What are the sources of Hitler's power in Germany? may be of general interest.

Author(s):  
Steven Michael Press

In recognizing more than just hyperbole in their critical studies of National Socialist language, post-war philologists Viktor Klemperer (1946) and Eugen Seidel (1961) credit persuasive words and syntax with the expansion of Hitler's ideology among the German people. This popular explanation is being revisited by contemporary philologists, however, as new historical argument holds the functioning of the Third Reich to be anything but monolithic. An emerging scholarly consensus on the presence of more chaos than coherence in Nazi discourse suggests a new imperative for research. After reviewing the foundational works of Mein Kampf (1925) and Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), the author confirms Klemperer and Seidel’s claim for linguistic manipulation in the rise of the National Socialist Party. Most importantly, this article provides a detailed explanation of how party leaders employed rhetorical language to promote fascist ideology without an underlying basis of logical argumentation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-36
Author(s):  
Mikkel Dack

As part of the post-war denazification campaign, as many as 20 million Germans were screened for employment by Allied armies. Applicants were ordered to fill out political questionnaires (Fragebögen) and allowed to justify their membership in Nazi organizations in appended statements. This mandatory act of self-reflection has led to the accumulation of a massive archival repository, likely the largest collection of autobiographical writings about the Third Reich. This article interprets individual and family stories recorded in denazification documents and provides insight into how Germans chose to remember and internalize the National Socialist years. The Fragebögen allowed and even encouraged millions of respondents to rewrite their personal histories and to construct whitewashed identities and accompanying narratives to secure employment. Germans embraced the unique opportunity to cast themselves as resisters and victims of the Nazi regime. These identities remained with them after the dissolution of the denazification project and were carried forward into the post-occupation period.


2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-415
Author(s):  
Reinhard Markner

AbstractAmong the many publishing ventures of the “Reichsinstitut für die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands,” the journal Forschungen zur Judenfrage (1936–1944) has gained most notoriety. In its nine volumes, various aspects of the “Jewish question,” ranging from the Jews in antiquity to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, were dealt with from a strictly National Socialist point of view. The ambitious project proved to be a failure even before the Third Reich collapsed. While some of the journal's contributors managed to pursue their academic careers in post-war West Germany, its founder, Walter Frank, committed suicide in 1945.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-514
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kruszewski

The subject of this article are basic questions within the range of civil law. They concern the general position of a human and legal people in the sphere of this law on Polish territory, which was incorporated into the Third Reich. The position of individuals, the citizens of II RP, under the occupation of the Third Reich in years 1939–1945, is analysed by the author not from the perspective of literal meaning of regulations of general part of Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) from 1896, but from the perspective of their specific interpretation, congruent with strategic and ideological purposes of the Nazi regime. In the article, the following issues are touched upon in turn: 1) personal law in terms of classical civil law contra national-socialist regime; 2) racism towards civil rights of a subjective individual; 3) elimination of the Jews from the legal relationships of civil law; 4) difficulties in the sphere of access to certain professions for Polish people and some restrictions upon personal rights; 5) the dependence of possibilities of exercising the private personal right on the consent to denationalization; 6) ban concerning getting married and the right to motherhood and fatherhood; 7) legislation of sterilisation and euthanasia. The formal changes in the legislation which were in force in the Third Reich — except for personal and family law (as well as legal rules connected with it regarding health protection of offspring), and “peasant law” (Bauernrecht) — were not significant, as is proved by the author. The old legal order was reversed in the Third Reich due to its new interpretation: classical concepts and legal institutions were filled with a different content. After the formal extension of BGB to territories incorporated into the Reich, which followed the decree of 25 September 1941 introducing German civil law, these territories became a field of social-political and racial-nationalist experiments, which in fact had a little in common with the German Civil Code’s regulations. A principle of equal access to private subjective rights was respected only in case of German people, i.a. the part which passively gave up to indoctrination. In relation to Jews, racism spoiled in this case the idea and concept of private subjective rights.


2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 193-213
Author(s):  
Christoph Wehner

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag skizziert die institutionelle Entwicklung der Landesversicherungsanstalten (LVAen) Baden und Württemberg im „Dritten Reich“ und stellt die Einbindung der beiden Versicherungsträger in die nationalsozialistische Renten- und Gesundheitspolitik dar. Zentrale Untersuchungsaspekte bilden die personellen Umbrüche im Zuge der nationalsozialistischen Machteroberung, die Ausschaltung der Selbstverwaltung und die Etablierung des „Führerprinzips“, der Wandel der institutionellen Leistungspolitik vor dem Hintergrund sich verändernder gesundheitspolitischer Rahmenbedingungen und Zielsetzungen sowie das Verwaltungshandeln der Versicherungsanstalten im Rahmen der NS-Rentenpolitik, insbesondere in Hinsicht auf den Ausschluss und die Diskriminierung von „Staatsfeinden“ und Juden. In einem abschließenden Kapitel wird auf die unmittelbare Nachkriegsentwicklung und die Reorganisation der demokratischen Selbstverwaltung in Baden und Württemberg eingegangen. Wesentliche Teile dieses Beitrages basieren auf der zum Teil erstmaligen Auswertung von Archivbeständen aus dem Badischen Generallandesarchiv in Karlsruhe (GLAK), dem Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HStAS), dem Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württembergs sowie dem Bundesarchiv (BArch). Abstract Institutional History of the Landesversicherungsanstalten (LVAen) Baden and Württemberg in the „Third Reich“ The article outlines the institutional history of the Landesversicherungsanstalten (LVAen) Baden and Württemberg in the “Third Reich” which is embedded in the shifting goals of national socialist pension- and health policy. Key aspects are the personnel policy changes during the “Machtergreifung”, the elimination of the principle of “Selbstverwaltung” and the implementation of the “Führerprinzip”, the change of institutional policies considering the shifting premises and goals in national socialist health policy and the role of the LVAen in the pension policy of the regime, especially regarding the exclusion and discrimination of “Staatsfeinden” and Jews. In a final chapter, the article gives an outlook on post-war developments and the reorganization of the democratic “Selbstverwaltung” in Baden and Württemberg. Large parts of this article are based on the – partial first time – evaluation of collections of records of the Badisches Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (GLAK), the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HStAS), the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HStAS), the Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg and the Bundesarchiv (BArch).


Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 698-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLARE COPLEY

ABSTRACT:Despite its National Socialist origins, the post-war use of Berlin's Tempelhof Airport has seen it recast as a ‘symbol of freedom’. Since the airport's 2008 closure, the site has been caught between calls for increased engagement with its use under the Third Reich and economic incentives to repackage it as an attractive events location. Through analysing the different strategies through which Tempelhof's past is negotiated, this article will highlight the contested nature of Berlin's relationship with the past and the complex interaction between memory politics and more pragmatic issues.


Author(s):  
Johann Chapoutot

This chapter describes how the National Socialist party adopted a discourse on the origins of the Nordic race. The Nazis developed a coherent origin myth and provided the German people with a distinguished ancestry because they wished to glorify a nation severely humiliated in 1918, first by a military defeat that was rarely acknowledged as such and subsequently by a peace at Versailles that was perceived as a diktat. This discourse on origins was conceived and transmitted in various ways, including academic and scholarly research. History and anthropology, often perceived as auxiliary sciences, were thrust into the service of the new reigning discipline, racial science (Rassenkunde), producing the kind of scholarship under the Third Reich that its leaders demanded.


2018 ◽  
pp. 19-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Uwe Hohendahl

The first chapter focuses on Schmitt’s post-war diaries (Glossarium) and a number of small essays written between 1946 and 1949. In these works Schmitt seeks to come to terms with the defeat of the Third Reich, his own fate as a well-known collaborator, and the situation of the German people. The reading underscores Schmitt’s resistance to the admission of guilt and analyses his strategies to present himself as the victim of liberal moralism. At the centre of the inquiry stands Schmitt’s complex and conflicted self-definition in religious, political and professional terms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-213
Author(s):  
Christoph Wehner

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag skizziert die institutionelle Entwicklung der Landesversicherungsanstalten (LVAen) Baden und Württemberg im „Dritten Reich“ und stellt die Einbindung der beiden Versicherungsträger in die nationalsozialistische Renten- und Gesundheitspolitik dar. Zentrale Untersuchungsaspekte bilden die personellen Umbrüche im Zuge der nationalsozialistischen Machteroberung, die Ausschaltung der Selbstverwaltung und die Etablierung des „Führerprinzips“, der Wandel der institutionellen Leistungspolitik vor dem Hintergrund sich verändernder gesundheitspolitischer Rahmenbedingungen und Zielsetzungen sowie das Verwaltungshandeln der Versicherungsanstalten im Rahmen der NS-Rentenpolitik, insbesondere in Hinsicht auf den Ausschluss und die Diskriminierung von „Staatsfeinden“ und Juden. In einem abschließenden Kapitel wird auf die unmittelbare Nachkriegsentwicklung und die Reorganisation der demokratischen Selbstverwaltung in Baden und Württemberg eingegangen. Wesentliche Teile dieses Beitrages basieren auf der zum Teil erstmaligen Auswertung von Archivbeständen aus dem Badischen Generallandesarchiv in Karlsruhe (GLAK), dem Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HStAS), dem Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württembergs sowie dem Bundesarchiv (BArch). Abstract Institutional History of the Landesversicherungsanstalten (LVAen) Baden and Württemberg in the „Third Reich“ The article outlines the institutional history of the Landesversicherungsanstalten (LVAen) Baden and Württemberg in the “Third Reich” which is embedded in the shifting goals of national socialist pension- and health policy. Key aspects are the personnel policy changes during the “Machtergreifung”, the elimination of the principle of “Selbstverwaltung” and the implementation of the “Führerprinzip”, the change of institutional policies considering the shifting premises and goals in national socialist health policy and the role of the LVAen in the pension policy of the regime, especially regarding the exclusion and discrimination of “Staatsfeinden” and Jews. In a final chapter, the article gives an outlook on post-war developments and the reorganization of the democratic “Selbstverwaltung” in Baden and Württemberg. Large parts of this article are based on the – partial first time – evaluation of collections of records of the Badisches Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (GLAK), the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HStAS), the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HStAS), the Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg and the Bundesarchiv (BArch).


Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan

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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