Introduction

Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Zeidman

Despite knowledge since the postwar period and the efforts of neurologist Leo Alexander, the neuroscience community has been slow to recognize its involvement in the racial hygiene policies of the Third Reich. Part of this has been denial, but part of it protective of past perpetrators. However, since the popularization of medicine in the Nazi era in the 1980s, the fall of the Berlin Wall making previously unavailable patient data in the 1990s, and some astute articles in the neurology literature, neuroscience in the Nazi era has emerged as a scientific topic. Pioneering works by Shevell and Peiffer highlighted the unethical involvement of even famed German neuroscientists such as Julius Hallervorden. In the 2000s a growing body of literature has begun to show common threads between the exile of persecuted neuroscientists and the rise of increasingly destructive policies toward neurologic patients, and the exploitation of these patients for scientific research.

Author(s):  
Michael I. Shevell

Abstract: It is commonly thought that the horrific medical abuses occurring during the era of the Third Reich were limited to fringe physicians acting in extreme locales such as the concentration camps. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that there was a widespread perversion of medical practice and science that extended to mainstream academic physicians. Scientific thought, specifically the theories of racial hygiene, and the political conditions of a totalitarian dictatorship, acted symbiotically to devalue the intrinsic worth to society of those individuals with mental and physical disabilities. This devaluation served to foster the medical abuses which occurred. Neurosciences in the Third Reich serves as a backdrop to highlight what was the slippery slope of medical practice during that era. Points on this slippery slope included the “dejudification” of medicine, unethical experimentation in university clinics, systematic attempts to sterilize and euthanasize targeted populations, the academic use of specimens obtained through such programs and the experimental atrocities within the camps.


1996 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Blaich

German Seventh-day Adventists entered the Nazi era with apprehension. As a foreign sect which resembled Judaism in many respects, Adventists were particularly threatened by a society based on the principle of völkisch racism. Yet the new state also had much to offer them, for it held the prospect of new opportunities for the church. The Nazi state banished the scourge of liberalism and godless Bolshevism, it restored conservative standards in the domestic sphere, and it took effective steps to return German society to a life in harmony with nature—a life Adventists had long championed.


Author(s):  
Tilman Venzl

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.


Antiquity ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 76 (291) ◽  
pp. 209-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Maischberger

The history of the archaeological disciplines in Germany during the Nazi era can be considered as a locus classicus of nationalist interpretation and misuse of the past. For some time now, various efforts have been made to enhance our understanding of this period, including several aspects related to archaeology and cultural politics. Most studies have been carried on by modern historians, but also archaeologists have engaged in historiographical research on their own discipline. Some freqiiently cited works like Bollmus (1970) Kater (1974) and Losemann (1977) are still fundamental for our understanding of important aspects of Nazi cultural politics as well as the involvement of traditional institutions into the dictatorial system.


1960 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Earl R. Beck

Before he met death by his own hand in 1946, Colin Ross was one of Germany's most famous journalist-travelers. No less than fifteen books and a host of articles described his visits to countries from the Arctic to the Pacific and Haha Whenua to Africa, “ mit Kind und Kegel und Kamera ”—“ bag, baggage, and camera.” His greatest renown—or notoriety—dated from the Nazi era. Hitler himself said, “A man like Colin Ross, for example, gave me infinitely more precious information on the subject” of the Far East than all of the professional diplomats. Ross was, indeed, regarded with some exaggeration as “ one of Hitler's foremost geopoliticians,” and, probably with even greater exaggeration, as a paid spy for the Third Reich. When he visited South America in 1919-1920, however, it was suspicions of Bolshevist rather than Nazi inclinations which placed obstacles in the path of high ambitions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 546-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Petropoulos

This article discusses art dealers who trafficked in looted art during the Third Reich and how they re-established networks and continued their trade in the postwar period. I argue that these dealers worked within a series of overlapping networks. A primary network was centered in Munich, with dealers such as Dr. Bruno Lohse (Göring’s art agent in Paris during the war); Maria Almas Dietrich, Karl Haberstock, Walter Andreas Hofer, and Adolf Wüster. These individuals worked closely with colleagues in Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein (states contiguous with Bavaria) in the postwar years. Many of the individuals in outer appendages of the networks had not been complicit in the Nazis’ plundering program, yet they trafficked in looted works and formed dealer networks that extended to Paris, London, and New York. Both the recently discovered Gurlitt cache – over 1400 pictures located in Munich, Salzburg, and Kornwestheim – and the annotated Weinmüller auction catalogues help illuminate aspects of these networks. Art dealers played a key role in the looting operations during the Third Reich and in the transfer of non-restituted objects in the postwar period. The current generation of the profession may be the key to advancing our understanding of a still incomplete history.


2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 543-564
Author(s):  
ULRICH SCHLIE

This review summarises the current state of knowledge and present trends in German historiography on the Third Reich. In Germany, assessment of the Nazi past has moved first from silence, and then from an emotionally charged engagement, to the more critical analyses of today. There has been a closer examination of the involvement of particular professional groups during the Nazi era, such as historians and lawyers. The ideological background of Hitler and the Nazi elite are being examined closely. Particular interest has also been shown in the ordinary aspects of living and coping in Hitler's Germany, the daily struggle and the moral dilemmas. An enormous interest in the German opposition against Hitler continues. In unified Germany, the memory of the struggle of the German resistance is kept alive in public consciousness as a positive line of continuity.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
John Connelly

This absorbing and well-researched book presents the story of Berlin's Catholic Church during the Nazi era from the perspective of a deeply committed believer. Professor Kevin Spicer is also Father Kevin Spicer. As such, it offers critics a chance to test their arguments against a serious voice from within the Church. But it also affords more neutral observers a chance to ponder the assumptions behind debates on the churches in the Third Reich, in particular, what acts can be considered oppositional and what drove certain religious believers into resistance.


2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 80-93
Author(s):  
Steven M. Whiting

After Different Drummers (1992) and The Twisted Muse (1997), MichaelH. Kater has presented Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits, as“the last in a trilogy on the interrelationship between sociopoliticalforces on the one side, and music and musicians in the Third Reich,on the other” (264). The author is Distinguished Research Professorof History at the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies(York University). The author of the present review, a musicologist,must express his gratitude to Professor Kater for helping tomake it professionally unacceptable to restrict oneself anymore to“the music itself” when considering certain composers active in Germanyof the 1930s. By the same token, Kater’s reticence about “themusic itself” (which presumably springs from humility) will leavemany a musicologist itching to adduce (if not consult) the scores toconfirm or to contest Kater’s points, for Kater is writing about lives,not works, unless the works have impinged on biographical issues.


1987 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hayes

Carl Bosch and Carl Krauch, accomplished scientists and prominent executives in the BASF and IG Farben chemical corporations, were drawn together by mutual admiration and common technical interests. In the Nazi era, however, they came to embody competing liberal and nationalist conceptions of German political economy. This article examines their relationship, the reasons for their divergent stances, and their individual contributions to the economic and productive power of the Third Reich. Ironically, Bosch's understanding of his industry, his nation, and scientific progress led him to oppose the Nazis, but also to lay the basis for their recruitment of Krauch and the German chemical industry for their expansionist purposes.


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