The Prussian Paradigm?

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-220
Author(s):  
Helen Roche
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Boarding Schools ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
State Schools

The very first Napolas which were founded at Potsdam, Plön, and Köslin, as well as those which were subsequently founded at Naumburg, Oranienstein, Bensberg, Berlin-Spandau, and Wahlstatt, were deliberately established on the premises of the former Prussian cadet schools, which had been refashioned as civilian ‘State Boarding Schools’ (Staatliche Bildungsanstalten/Stabilas) after World War I, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. To an extent, the NPEA authorities deliberately wanted to resurrect the tradition of the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps at the Napolas, but in a new, Nazified guise. This chapter explores the extent to which the former cadet-school Napolas retained or regained their militaristic Prussian spirit, and examines continuities between the Prussian cadet schools, the Stabilas, and the NPEA. It begins by chronicling the demise of the cadet schools and their resurrection as civilian state schools, more or less dedicated to upholding the Weimar Republic, during the aftermath of World War I. It then goes on to chart the rise of revanchist sentiment and the formation of illegal Hitler Youth cells at the Stabilas during the early 1930s, before analysing the process of Napolisation which took place in 1933–4 in greater detail. In conclusion, the chapter sites the Napolas’ Janus-faced attitude towards the cadet-school tradition within existing debates regarding the affinities (or otherwise) between Prussianism and National Socialism, and the degree of continuity which existed between the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

Ernst Jünger and Storms of Steel

2019 ◽  
pp. 22-35
Author(s):  
Elliot Neaman
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter discusses the life and work of Ernst Jünger, who was part of a strain in modern German conservatism that tested the limits of modernity and Enlightenment rationality. He catapulted to fame as a young man on the basis of his World War I memoirs, In Storms of Steel, which made him part of the antidemocratic forces of the Weimar Republic, but he retreated into the inner emigration during the Third Reich. After 1950 he lived a reclusive life but published a stream of essays and books and an impressive diary that chronicled almost four decades of life with sharp observations on a wide range of topics. He was a cultural pessimist who thought that the rise of a unifying planetary technology and the loss of local culture meant that we were entering into a posthistorical world of fragmentation, and new forms of cultural and political tyranny.

Ostmark

2021 ◽  
pp. 268-287
Author(s):  
Helen Roche
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
Terrorist Activity ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Security Services ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich

Following Austria’s annexation by the Third Reich, the NPEA authorities were eager to pursue every opportunity to found new Napolas in the freshly acquired territories of the ‘Ostmark’. In the first instance, the Inspectorate took over the existing state boarding schools (Bundeserziehungsanstalten/Staatserziehungsanstalten) at Wien-Breitensee, Wien-Boerhavegasse, Traiskirchen, and the Theresianum. Secondly, beyond Vienna, numerous Napolas were also founded in the buildings of monastic foundations which had been requisitioned and expropriated by the Nazi security services. These included the abbey complexes at Göttweig, Lambach, Seckau, Vorau, and St. Paul (Spanheim), as well as the Catholic seminary at St. Veit (present-day Ljubljana-Šentvid, Slovenia). This chapter begins by charting the chequered history of the former imperial and royal (k.u.k.) cadet schools in Vienna, which were refashioned into civilian Bundeserziehungsanstalten by the Austrian socialist educational reformer Otto Glöckel immediately after World War I. During the reign of Dollfuß and Schuschnigg’s Austrofascist state, the schools were threatened from within by the terrorist activity of illegal Hitler Youth cells, and the Anschluss was ultimately welcomed by many pupils, staff, and administrators. August Heißmeyer and Otto Calliebe’s subsequent efforts to reform the schools into Napolas led to their being incorporated into the NPEA system on 13 March 1939. The chapter then treats the Inspectorate’s foundation of further Napolas in expropriated religious buildings, focusing on NPEA St. Veit as a case study. In conclusion, it outlines the ways in which both of these forms of Napolisation conformed to broader patterns of Nazification policy in Austria after the Anschluss.

Von der 'Polizei der Demokratie' zum 'Glied und Werkzeug der nationalsozialistischen Gemeinschaft'

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Vera
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Role Function ◽  
The Third ◽  
Highly Effective ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Effective Instrument ◽  
The Third Reich

Interwar Germany represents a highly interesting period from the perspective of police history. This book focuses on the German police force as an instrument of state authority and analyses its role, function and importance in interwar Germany based on the articles published between 1918 and 1939 in the journal ‘Die Polizei’. It reveals that the failure of the Weimar police as an instrument of state authority contributed significantly to the rise of National Socialism and the destruction of the Weimar Republic. After the Nazi takeover, the German police rapidly became a loyal and highly effective instrument of rule for the regime. Hence, the German police in the Third Reich blatantly failed in moral terms, but not as an instrument of state authority.

X. Gesetzesbruch als Prinzip. Entwicklungslinien des weltanschaulichen Radikalismus in der Führerdiktatur

2015 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 420-440
Author(s):  
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Relationship

Breaking the Law as a Norm: Contours of Ideological Radicalism within the Nazi Dictatorship. This article analyzes the relationship between Nazi legal experts’ efforts to create a canon of constitutional law for the Third Reich and the ideological radicalism characteristic of Hitler and the SS-state. The attempts of legal professionals to establish “völkisch” constitutional law emerged out of the staunch anti-liberalism that had spread throughout Germany since the end of World War I. However, this “völkisch” constitutional law bore no resemblance to rational European legal thought. It not only proved to be ineffective for this reason, but also because the ideological radicalism that reigned supreme in the Third Reich sought to break the law and let lawlessness rule.

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.

“These Scoundrels Are Not the German People”

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-90
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Death ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German People ◽  
Reign Of Terror

This chapter discusses the Nazi seizure of power from 1933 to 1935. The chapter extends the argument that Jewish veterans used their record of fighting to counter antisemetic attacks into the early years of the Third Reich, demonstrating that Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 did not bring “social death” for the Jewish Frontkampfer. The reign of terror the Nazis unleashed on Jews, Communists, and other groups stood in marked contrast to their failed attempts to marginalize Jewish ex-servicemen, whose record of service in the front lines in World War I enabled them to claim and negotiate a special status in the new Germany. Jewish veterans did not break with their identity as Germans, and continued to demand recognition of their sacrifices from the German public as well as the Nazi Party.

„Denn mit dem Pogrom war ich und werde gewesen sein“

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Venzl
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Postwar Period ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
German Politics ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Transitional Time

Abstract:Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition is juxtaposed to Lotte Paepcke’s descriptions of the disrespect for Jews in Germany from the Weimar Republic, through the Third Reich, to the Federal Republic. While Paepcke’s depiction of the transitional time to National Socialism can be well understood in terms of Honneth’s theory as a continuous erosion of the various spheres of recognition, the theory is not fully adequate to describe her position on the German politics of memory of the postwar period. Paepcke is convinced that a renewed recognition of Jews in Germany after the Shoah can only be obtained by a broad acceptance of the concept of ‘negative symbiosis’ (Dan Diner), both publicly and individually.

Who Were the German Independent Socialists? The Leipzig City Council Election of 6 December 1917

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mckibben
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
City Council ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The emergence of the Independent Socialist party (USPD) in Germany during World War I had momentous and long-reaching consequences. Organized as a group of dissenters within the established German Social Democratic party (SPD), independent socialism grew into a movement that split Germany's working class into two, then three, warring factions. The result was a struggle for supremacy among socialist party factions to which subsequent writers have attributed the “failed” revolution of November 1918, a Weimar Constitution that alienated rather than satisfied German workers, and ultimately the inability of German Socialists to present a unified front against the ultimate threat to German democracy: Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

Weimar Germany and its Histories

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric D. Weitz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
Total War ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Times

Years later, after the catastrophes of the Third Reich and World War II, Arnold Zweig remembered how he had returned home from another disaster, World War I. “With what hopes had we come back from the war!” he wrote. Zweig recalled not just the catastrophe of total war, but also the élan of revolution. Like a demon, he threw himself into politics, then into his writing. “I have big works, wild works, great well-formed, monumental works in my head!,” he wrote to his friend Helene Weyl in April 1919. “I want to write! Everything that I have done up until now is just a preamble.” And it was not to be “normal” writing. The times were of galloping stallions and wide-open furrows, and talent was everywhere. War and revolution had drawn people out of the confining security of bourgeois life. “The times have once again placed adventure in the center of daily life, making possible once more the great novel and the great story.”

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.

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