Germany's Foreign Relations and the Nazi Past

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93
Author(s):  
CHRISTIAN HAASE ◽  
CHRISTIAN KRAIKER ◽  
JÖRN KREUZER
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Auswärtiges Amt ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
Set Up

On 7 November 1968, the political activist Beate Klarsfeld entered the stage of a CDU party convention in Berlin, slapped the West German chancellor Kurt-Georg Kiesinger in the face and cried ‘Nazi, Nazi’. During the Third Reich, Kiesinger had worked in one of the propaganda departments of the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office). The history of the German foreign office received additional attention in 1968 due to the fact that the then vice-chancellor and foreign secretary of the Grand Coalition, Willy Brandt, was a former resistance fighter, who had been stripped of his citizenship by the Auswärtiges Amt in 1938. Despite numerous scandals about the post-war careers of former Nazi diplomats in the 1950s and 60s, the Auswärtiges Amt escaped closer scrutiny until 2005, when the then foreign secretary Joschka Fischer set up a historical inquiry commission. In his memoirs, Fischer has argued that his decision was influenced by the events of 1968.

An inability to mourn? The German Federal Republic and the Nazi past

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-572
Author(s):  
FRISO WIELENGA
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
German Federal Republic ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
National Socialists ◽  
Western Germany ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Probing Questions

Commonly, the second half of the 1960s is considered to be the period in which Western Germany actually started dealing with its National-Socialist past. The youth of that time is said to have opened the discussion and to have broken taboos by asking the elder generation probing questions and by exposing the careers of former National-Socialists in the politics and society of post-war Germany (the FRG). I make clear that this picture is very one-sided and I also give an overview on the different ways Western Germany coped with this past between 1945 and the end of the 1980s. Of course, these ways differed strongly over the years, but the ‘Third Reich’ has always remained present in German historical awareness and is branded into German identity – for better or for worse.

Relics of the Reich – dark tourism and Nazi sites in Germany

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Philpott
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Dark Tourism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Museum Professionals ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
Self Examination

Purpose The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the fate of the buildings and public spaces created by the Nazis. By doing so, the author explains how Germany has handled this difficult legacy as part of a wider narrative of Germany’s post-war national reconciliation with its Nazi past. Design/methodology/approach Visits to Germany; interviews with German academics and museum professionals running memorials and museums relevant to the subject; study of literature related to specific Nazi sites and also literature related to the Nazi legacy in Germany more generally, as well as discussion with academics interested in dark tourism and national self-examination of difficult historical legacies. Findings Far more Nazi buildings remain in existence than is generally realised. For many years after 1945, Germany ignored the architectural legacy of the Nazi period through a mixture of shame, other more pressing priorities and pragmatism. Originally, it was pressure from survivors and families of victims of Nazi terror that led to public acknowledgement of the historical significance of some Nazi sites. In more recent years, German reunification, the passing of the complicit generations in Germany and growing national self-confidence have led to a greater willingness to acknowledge the importance of these sites. Originality/value First paper in English examining Nazi architecture in the round and the first one offering a critical analysis of Germany’s handling of the architectural legacy of the Third Reich.

Tape Work and Memory Work in Post-War Germany

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTHA SPRIGGE
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Early Response ◽  
Military Technology ◽  
Total War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
East German ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War

ABSTRACTSonic traces of the Third Reich have held significant memorial power in post-war Germany. This article traces three works that sample one of the most well-known recordings from the Nazi period: Joseph Goebbels's declaration of Total War, delivered on 18 February 1943, and broadcast on newsreel and radio the following week. In both message and material, this recording epitomizes Friedrich Kittler's claim that tape is a military technology. The works examined span different memory debates in post-war Germany: Bernd Alois Zimmermann realized Requiem für einen jungen Dichter (1967–9) as West Germans were engaging in the first public discussions of the Holocaust, Georg Katzer's Mein 1989 (1990) is an East German composer's early response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, while Marcel Beyer's novel Flughunde (The Karnau Tapes, 1995) reveals the continued attempt to address the legacy of the Third Reich after German Reunification. Analysed together, these works create new configurations of discourse about wartime memory, moving away from geopolitical contours. Each of these artists transforms tape's wartime uses – namely dissemination and encryption – into forms of memorial labour. Through their physical and conceptual manipulations of tape, these artists create less deterministic readings of the Nazi past.

The Language of Ideology: Lingual Manipulation of Readers in German Literature of the Third Reich

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Michael Press
Keyword(s):  
German Literature ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Argument ◽  
Underlying Basis ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
German People

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.

Settling Scores: German Music, Denazification, and the Americans, 1945-1953. By David Monod. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2005. Pp. xiv+325. $45.00. ISBN 0-8078-2944-7.

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-352
Author(s):  
Pamela M. Potter
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
American Military ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Research Interviews ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military

The impetus among Germany's cultural elite to mark the end of World War II as a “zero hour” has been analyzed mainly as a German phenomenon, with considerably less attention to the role of the occupying forces in fostering that mentality. Settling Scores offers a long-awaited analysis of the American Military Government's precarious navigation in the music world, one of the most sensitive cultural areas for both the conquerors and the conquered. Most histories of twentieth-century German music and culture suffer from a basic misunderstanding of this tumultuous time and uncritically accept many of the prejudices it engendered. As this study demonstrates, the notion of a musical “zero hour” is one such misconception, for the imperfect projects of denazification and reeducation left the musical world of the post-war period largely indistinguishable from its pre-war existence. Based on thorough archival research, interviews with eyewitnesses, and a wide range of literature, this highly readable and engaging history reveals in detail the successes and failures of the Military Government's ambitious agenda to root out the musical “Führers” of the Third Reich and to transform music from a tool of nationalist aggression to one of democratic tolerance.

scholarly journals Le délicat problème des restes humains en archéologie

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 206-209
Author(s):  
Philippe Charlier
Keyword(s):  
Human Remains ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
Nazi Ideology ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The City ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

The problem I am interested in is above all that of the biomedical management of human remains in archaeology, these ancient artifacts “unlike any other”, these “atypical patients”. In the following text, I will examine, with an interdisciplinary perspective (anthropological, philosophical and medical), how it is possible to work on human remains in archaeology, but also how to manage their storage after study. Working in archaeology is already a political problem (in the Greek sense of the word, i.e., it literally involves the city), and one could refer directly to Laurent Olivier’s work on the politics of archaeological excavations during the Third Reich and the spread of Nazi ideology based on excavation products and anthropological studies. But in addition, working on human remains can also pose political problems, and we paid the price in my team when we worked on Robespierre’s death mask (the reconstruction of the face having created a real scandal on the part of the French far left) but also when we worked on Henri IV’s head (its identification having considerably revived the historical clan quarrel between Orléans and Bourbon). Working on human remains is therefore anything but insignificant.

‘no human shape’: Unformed Life in The Unnamable

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Byron Heffer
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Closed Circuit ◽  
The Third ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Moral Critique ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War

This chapter argues that Beckett’s antipathy to normative ideas of bodily and aesthetic form derives from his resistance to the Nazi politics of art. It utilises theories from disability studies and the work of Michel Foucault and Roberto Esposito to reconsider Beckett’s post-war aesthetic of deformation, framing it as a response to the inextricable connection between biopolitics and aesthetic form in the Third Reich. It offers a reading of The Unnamable that deviates from critical accounts that cast Beckett’s text as a redemptive moral critique of Nazi biopolitics. Beckett denies the reassuring conflation of degenerate artistry with passive, nonviolent exposure to Nazi violence. The degenerate artist, as figured in The Unnamable, is both victim and perpetrator in a closed circuit of biopolitical violence and aesthetic (de)formation.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 394-419
Author(s):  
Helen Roche
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Specific Identification ◽  
The Third ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War

This chapter investigates the fates of NPEA staff and pupils after the end of the Third Reich. It begins with an account of how the schools’ former adherents fared under Allied denazification processes, and the ways in which these shaped later exculpatory narratives regarding the Napolas’ exact nature and relationship with the Nazi regime. It then describes the formation of the NPEA old boys’ networks (Traditionsgemeinschaften), and the various stages in the development of Napola memory culture, considering how successful the ‘Napolaner’ may have been in creating a unique strand of collective memory all their own, defined by their own specific identification as a ‘community of experience’. It also analyses former pupils’ reactions to the appearance of books, films, and TV programmes dealing with the NPEA in the post-war and post-Wall media landscape, including the psycho-historical study Das Erbe der Napola (1996), and Dennis Gansel’s film Napola: Elite für den Führer / Napola: Before the Fall (2005). The chapter concludes by siting these findings within the context of relevant literature on Allied denazification policy, veterans’ organizations in the Federal Republic, and post-war German memory.

Architecture and the Memory of Nazism in Postwar Munich

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 140-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavriel D. Roseneld
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
German Politics ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
To Come ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
The Impact

Few issues have possessed the centrality or sparked as much controversyin the postwar history of the Federal Republic of Germany(FRG) as the struggle to come to terms with the nation’s Nazi past.This struggle, commonly known by the disputed term Vergangenheitsbewältigung,has cast a long shadow upon nearly all dimensions ofGerman political, social, economic, and cultural life and has preventedthe nation from attaining a normalized state of existence inthe postwar period. Recent scholarly analyses of German memoryhave helped to broaden our understanding of how “successful” theGermans have been in mastering their Nazi past and have shed lighton the impact of the Nazi legacy on postwar German politics andculture. Even so, important gaps remain in our understanding ofhow the memory of the Third Reich has shaped the postwar life ofthe Federal Republic.

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