German historians and the crucial dilemma

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-384
Author(s):  
HERMANN W. VON DER DUNK
Keyword(s):  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
Historical Justice ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Democratic Norms ◽  
Western Historiography

Post-war German historiography is an interesting example of changing norms and the problem of satisfying a balance between explanation and (moral) judgement. Whereas national historians of Imperial Germany could feel in harmony with History, defeat and the peace of Versailles destroyed the belief in historical justice, so the bulk of the craft sympathized with Hitler's policy, although not always with his methods. The fall of the Third Reich and the revelation of its crimes caused a deep crisis of historical consciousness and attempts to deny or belittle personal responsibility and cooperation. After the 1960s however, a generation took over who could internalize the democratic norms and, through that, closed the gap between German and Western historiography. With the next generation after the reunification, critical revisionism of the national past even increased in so far as it included the first wave of post-war historiography with its apologetic tendencies. Historiography so became a striking example of a thorough national metamorphosis.

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.

scholarly journals Helmuth Plessner and The Delayed Nation

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-140
Author(s):  
Joachim Whaley
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
German History ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S

Helmuth Plessner’s The Delayed Nation was a key text in the Sonderweg narrative that dominated the writing of German history from the later 1950s to the mid-1980s: the idea that the disaster of the Third Reich and the Holocaust could be explained in terms of Germany’s problematic path to modernity since the Middle Ages. The book had originally been published under a rather prolix title in Zurich in 1935 when Plessner was an émigré in the Netherlands. It made little impact then, and only attracted attention from 1959 under a short title which seemed to capture the essence of the emerging left-liberal view of the disastrous course of German history. The more accessible title in reality masked an extremely complex book which did not sit easily with the social history preoccupations of the avant-garde of post-war German historians. Plessner’s history was a narrative of intellectual degeneration that placed philosophy at the heart of the German problem. Plessner’s book can only be fully understand in relation to his own philosophical and political concerns in the 1920s. Its impact in the 1960s and after derives almost entirely from its suggestive and eye-catching title.

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.

‘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.

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.

The Sources of Hitler's Power

1942 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-408
Author(s):  
Waldemar Gurian
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
General Interest ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
German People

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.

Tailoring Truth

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-36
Author(s):  
Mikkel Dack
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
The Third ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
Insight Into

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.

Introduction: The Political Ambiguities of Pius XII

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Simon Unger-Alvi
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
German History ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract This collection of essays evaluates the relations between Eugenio Pacelli and Germany from the beginning of his career as a papal nuncio in Munich in 1917 until his pontificate during the wartime and post-war periods. The contributions to this volume do not provide a complete overview of this topic. Instead, they should be understood as case studies on certain aspects of Vatican-German history. At the core of this work are the complexities and ambiguities of papal politics between four political systems from the Kaiserreich to the West German Federal Republic. Ultimately, this volume thus touches upon very diverse subjects ranging from Pacelli’s ‚concordat diplomacy‘ in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich to his silence during the Holocaust and the German occupation of Italy, the anti-communism of the Cold War, and the Vatican’s path towards reform in the post-war period.

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