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.

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.

Paul Sethe

2018 ◽  
pp. 26-84
Author(s):  
Volker R. Berghahn
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Themes ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Ambiguous Position

This chapter turns to the “grand old man” of West German journalism—Paul Sethe (1901–1967)—who was one of the best-known journalists during the founding years of the Federal Republic. Sethe also poses a considerable challenge to the historian who tries to evaluate his professional record because of his work as an editor of the Ohligser Anzeiger und Tageblatt (OA) until December 1933 and of Frankfurter Zeitung (FZ) between 1934 and 1943. After all, whereas in the OA he expressed views that were critical of Hitler before 1933, the FZ's journalism occupied a rather more ambiguous position in the Third Reich. There is also the question of whether deep down in his heart he was more of a scholar of serious history than a journalist writing in the daily hustle and bustle of the newspaper business. As this chapter shows, he wrote several big books on historical themes after 1945 and, judging from his output, putting pen to paper certainly seems to have come to him with ease.

‘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.

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.

Between Rome and the Godless: Martin Niemöller’s Apologetic Moves, 1930–50

2021 ◽  
pp. 74-94
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ziemann
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
The Third ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Third Reich

Martin Niemöller’s apologetic interventions from the late 1920s to the early 1950s reveal a complicated trajectory. He stood at the front line of the Protestant struggle against aggressive secularism in Weimar Germany. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Niemöller quickly emerged as the figurehead of attempts to defend the dogmatic integrity of the Protestant churches, yet also maintained the conversation with the German Christians in a common front against the ‘godless’ Bolsheviks and Freethinkers. After he had seriously contemplated converting to the Roman Catholic Church from 1939 to early 1941, he returned to a combative assertion of his Protestant identity vis-à-vis the Catholics in the early Federal Republic. Overall, the chapter argues that the dynamics of the religious field during the Third Reich are best understood as an intensification.

„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.

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