Personality

Author(s):  
George R. Mastroianni

Chapter 5 considers the role of personality in the Holocaust. The idea that psychopathology or insanity characterized the individual leaders of the Third Reich or the German population was simply not supported by the evidence. Perhaps these leaders, or even the German population as a whole, were not characterized by a psychological disorder but were nevertheless different from other people in some important way. The authoritarian personality, a construct derived from Freudian thought, was suggested as a possible explanation. German child-rearing practices were implicated in the production of this personality, which was thought to be related to perpetrator behavior. Defining and measuring the authoritarian personality has posed some challenges, and researchers have not convincingly tied authoritarian traits to perpetrator behavior. The concept of “national character,” a kind of societal-level personality, has similarly been difficult to define and connect to perpetrator behavior. Personality approaches have also been applied to the study of rescuers.

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Yee ◽  
Demetrius M. Coombs ◽  
Sabine Hildebrandt ◽  
William E. Seidelman ◽  
J. Henk Coert ◽  
...  

Pernkopf's Atlas of Anatomy contains anatomical plates with detailed images of the peripheral nerves. Its use is controversial due to the author's association with the "Third Reich" and the potential depiction of victims of the Holocaust. The ethical implications of using this atlas for informing surgical planning have not been assessed. Our objectives were: (1) assess the role of Pernkopf's atlas in nerve surgeons' current practice, and (2) determine whether a proposal for its ethical handling may provide possible guidance for use in surgery and surgical education. Published in NEUROSURGERY, Volume 84, Number 2, February 2019Presented at the American Society of Peripheral Nerve, 27th Annual Meeting,Phoenix, Arizona, January 12-14, 2018.Copyright ©2018 by the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, republished in the JBC Special Issue with permission. Image credit: Table of Contents image provided by the Medical University of Vienna, MUW-AD-003250-5-ABB-376  


Author(s):  
Stephen J. Plant

This chapter begins by describing some of the influences that shaped Bonhoeffer’s political views, narrowly construed, and the central role of Martin Luther’s thought in guiding the direction of those parts of his theology that connect with political life. The chapter continues by exploring how Bonhoeffer attempted to think with and through these sources about the duties and responsibilities of governments and citizens, of the Church, and of the individual Christian in response to the Church struggle and the policies of the Third Reich. What evolved was a reworking of the orders of creation and preservation, a subtle ecology of temporal and spiritual authority under God, and an understanding of reality understood through the incarnation of Christ. This theology funded a steadfast conviction that the Church can and must speak God’s Word to the world, even to the point of standing in the place of the victims of political oppression.


2008 ◽  
Vol 77 (6) ◽  
pp. 388-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco López-Muñoz ◽  
Cecilio Alamo ◽  
Pilar García-García ◽  
Juan D. Molina ◽  
Gabriel Rubio

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H. Kater

While in recent years a great deal has been written to clarify Germany's medical past, the picture is not yet complete in several important respects. In the realm of the sociology of medicine, for example, we still do not know enough about physicianpatient relationships from, say, the founding of the Second Empire to the present. On the assumption, based on the meager evidence available, that this relationship had an authoritarian structure from the physician on downward, did it have anything to do with the shape of German medicine in the Weimar Republic and, later, the Third Reich? Another relative unknown is the role of Jews in the development of medicine as a profession in Germany. Surely volumes could be written on the significant influence Jews have exerted on medicine in its post-Wilhelmian stages, as well as the irreversible victim status Jewish doctors were forced to assume after Hitler's ascension to power


Author(s):  
Camilla Tenaglia

Abstract This essay addresses the relations between Pius XII and Germany at the beginning of his pontificate through the role of Vatican Media, especially Vatican Radio. During the interwar period, the Vatican media system (media ensemble) underwent major transformations, including the creation of a radio broadcasting station in 1931. Pacelli was one of the main agents of these improvements: as Secretary of State supporting Guglielmo Marconi’s project, as Pope through his extensive use of the mass media at his disposal, from radio to cinema. At the end of the 30s the difficult diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Third Reich also had an impact on mass media, as shown by the election of Pacelli in March 1939. The role of Vatican Radio in Vatican diplomacy towards Nazi Germany was already clear during the events surrounding the Anschluss in 1938 and it became a tool for unofficial communication to convey more explicit stances on the regime during World War II. The same strategy was employed during the Option in Südtirol in 1939, when Catholics were able to deliver anti-Nazi propaganda thanks in part to radio in the attempt to avoid the voluntary resettlement of German-speaking Italian citizens from the area. The Holy See maintained a neutral position throughout the events, but at the same time Vatican Radio broadcast programmes in German about the condition of the Catholic Church under the Nazi regime. These broadcasts supported the efforts especially of the Archbishop of Trento Celestino Endrici and his clergy, who opposed the resettlement. Once again Vatican Radio proved a crucial tool for conveying unofficial communications while maintaining the neutral stance typical of the Holy See‘s foreign policy.


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.


Rusin ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 201-222
Author(s):  
A.I. Kudriachenko ◽  

The paper analyzes the course of events and the international context of Сarpatho- Ukrainian state’s rise and defeat in terms of role and impact of the leading European actors at the end of the 1930’s. Based on an in-depth study of the wide range of literature, documents and relevant archives, the author highlights the role of Carpatho-Ukraine, which for a short period happened to be at the epicenter of the geopolitical interests of the states whose actions or inaction fueled the warmongers. The revival and strengthening of a number of European countries at that historical period deteriorized international relations. The erosion of the Versailles-Washington bases intensified the contradictions in the foreign policy between the victorious and vanquished states. The defeated countries reinforced their positions, since the victors, who were expanding their military might at the expense of Czechoslovak Republic, including Transcarpathia, were becoming more submissive in accommodating territorial claims. This situation largely updated the approaches to the Ukrainian question. The variability of the ways to solve it largely depended on the situational decisions of the Third Reich political leadership.


Author(s):  
Michael Geheran

At the end of 1941, six weeks after the mass deportations of Jews from Nazi Germany had begun, Gestapo offices across the Reich received an urgent telex from Adolf Eichmann, decreeing that all war-wounded and decorated Jewish veterans of World War I be exempted from upcoming “evacuations.” Why this was so, and how Jewish veterans at least initially were able to avoid the fate of ordinary Jews under the Nazis, is the subject of this book. The same values that compelled Jewish soldiers to demonstrate bravery in the front lines in World War I made it impossible for them to accept passively, persecution under Hitler. They upheld the ideal of the German fighting man, embraced the fatherland, and cherished the bonds that had developed in military service. Through their diaries and private letters, as well as interviews with eyewitnesses and surviving family members and records from the police, Gestapo, and military, this book challenges the prevailing view that Jewish veterans were left isolated, neighborless, and having suffered a social death by 1938. Tracing the path from the trenches of the Great War to the extermination camps of the Third Reich, the book exposes a painful dichotomy: while many Jewish former combatants believed that Germany would never betray them, the Holocaust was nonetheless a horrific reality. In chronicling Jewish veterans' appeal to older, traditional notions of comradeship and national belonging, the book forces reflection on how this group made use of scant opportunities to defy Nazi persecution and, for some, to evade becoming victims of the Final Solution.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-352
Author(s):  
Pamela M. Potter

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.


Legal Studies ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-204
Author(s):  
Don Weatherburn ◽  
Mark Findlay

The discipline of criminology has been dominated since the turn of the century by an explanatory paradigm known as ‘positivism’. The distinctive features of that paradigm have been both substantive and methodological. On the substantive side ‘positivist criminology’ has been marked by a commitment to the explanation of criminal behaviour (and deviance generally) in terms of characteristics of the individual. Thus positivist criminology has been notable for its explanations of criminal behaviour in terms of gross bodily features, patterns of child-rearing, genetic defect, and idiosyncratic personality traits. On the methodological side positivist criminology has been marked by a preference for scientific method in the evaluation of theory and scientific ideas in the formulation of that theory. By and large these methodological predilections have meant assigning a primacy both to the role of systematic observation in the evaluation of theory and to the avoidance of theoretical assumptions whose validity could not be checked by recourse to observation.


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