Air Wars, Memory Wars

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Impact

The German preoccupation with the Nazi past, with issues of guilt, responsibility, and victimization “… doesn't end. Never will it end,” to quote the resigned note on which Günter Grass concluded his latest novel, Crabwalk. It manifests itself in ever new forms, as different parts of the past, which may or may not have been repressed, come to the fore and are painfully reconstructed, tentatively probed, and reluctantly and often only partially accepted. Each new perspective on the past reorders, sometimes even shatters, the previous mosaic. Recall the impact of the film Holocaust or of the Wehrmacht exhibition. A similar phenomenon is now occurring—or so some hope and others fear. Since 2002 German suffering, rather than German guilt, has become the principal theme in discourses about the past. The firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, “moral bombing,” mass rape, and ethnic cleansing dominate historical and literary production and public debate as the Eastern Front, war crimes, and the pervasive knowledge of the Holocaust did in the mid- and late-1990s, and the uniqueness of the Holocaust and its central place within the Third Reich did a decade before that.

scholarly journals Formation and Development of the Policy of “Overcoming the Past” in the National Memory of the FRG

2018 ◽  
pp. 96-121
Author(s):  
A. Kudryachenko
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past

The article analyzes the processes of postwar development of Germany from the point of view of implementing measures to denazify and disqualify persons who have tarnished themselves under theHitler regime, the specifics of the formation and stages of the formation of the policy of “overcoming the past” in the national memory of postwar Germany. The author, singling out four different stagesand depths of understanding, clarifies the problems of the formation and development of this policy from posing the “problem of guilt”, the differentiation of its types with respect to the common andexcellent policies of the two German states, the role of the international political context and the reconstruction of the historical truth regarding the Third Reich and conditions for the formation ofculture of memory in modern Germany. The strengths and weaknesses of West Germany’s ambivalent policy with regard to its identity are analyzed through clear disassociation from the Nazi past and, on the other hand, the broad integration of former Nazis into new public institutions as an option to win democracy in Germany despite the post-war moods of most of its citizens. The immediate significance of the succession of generations in the political arena, the public study of the Nazi past and the establishment of a new political culture in public discourse are underlined. Its main elements were the memory and responsibility of generations for the Holocaust and the strengthening of the national identity of the Germans through “constitutional patriotism”. In the united Germany, the comprehension of the totalitarian past, which took place quite intensively and resulted not only in public discussions, but also contributed to the memorialization and commemoration of historical memory, the reparation to victims of Nazism and forced workers of the Third Reich from different countries and the restoration of justice to all those affected by the so-called policy “Arization” and measures to return property and cultural values to their heirs, is fairly effective. The policy of “overcoming the past” contributed to the achievement of a public consensus of the national memory of the modern FRG regarding the recognition of the crimes of the Nazi period and the making of lessons from the past. As in any other Western society, in Germany the attitude towards the Holocaust is the cornerstone of the memory of the Second World War and the symbol of the crimes of Nazism, as well as the central historical event of the XX century.

Architecture and the Memory of Nazism in Postwar Munich

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 140-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavriel D. Roseneld
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
German Politics ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
To Come ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
The Impact

Few issues have possessed the centrality or sparked as much controversyin the postwar history of the Federal Republic of Germany(FRG) as the struggle to come to terms with the nation’s Nazi past.This struggle, commonly known by the disputed term Vergangenheitsbewältigung,has cast a long shadow upon nearly all dimensions ofGerman political, social, economic, and cultural life and has preventedthe nation from attaining a normalized state of existence inthe postwar period. Recent scholarly analyses of German memoryhave helped to broaden our understanding of how “successful” theGermans have been in mastering their Nazi past and have shed lighton the impact of the Nazi legacy on postwar German politics andculture. Even so, important gaps remain in our understanding ofhow the memory of the Third Reich has shaped the postwar life ofthe Federal Republic.

The Public Secret

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Eaglestone
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Way

The knowledge of the murder of the European Jews was a public secret in the Third Reich. What is a ‘public secret’? How does it shape or reshape a society? The answers to these questions are key to understanding the Holocaust and other genocides. However, the public secret is elusive because of its nature: when it is at its most powerful, it cannot be explicitly discussed; when it no longer holds such power, people deny their knowledge of it and complicity in its concealment. Both the ‘subjective experience’ of the public secret and its wider meaning are beyond the limits of the discipline of history and are better elucidated obliquely through a work of fiction: in this case Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a novel which reflects on the past in the way historians cannot. Significantly, the public secret and the consequences of complicity are important concepts for understanding the post-Holocaust world.

scholarly journals The Controversy That Isn't: The Debate Over Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners in Comparative Perspective

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
GAVRIEL D. ROSENFELD
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Media Hype ◽  
To Come ◽  
Nazi Past

This article attempts to explain the heated controversy sparked by Daniel Goldhagen's bestselling book Hitler's Willing Executioners, by comparing it with its most obvious precedent: the international furor in 1960–62 over William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Through such a comparison, the Goldhagen controversy emerges as a relatively shallow event, largely driven by the book's own weaknesses and by media hype, that provides little of value for a deeper historical understanding of the Holocaust. At the same time, however, Goldhagen's surprising popularity in Germany does, in fact, signal a possible shift in the Germans' long postwar struggle to ‘come to terms' with the Nazi past.

RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST AND ATTRIBUTING THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE HOLOCAUST

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Dresler-Hawke
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
Official Position ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Past

Since the beginning of the new Federal Republic of Germany, foreigners have evaluated much of the political and social cultures of Germany in accordance with their interpretations of the Nazi past. The former German Democratic Republic's identification with the antifascist resistance against the Nazi regime permitted much of the social and political responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich to be avoided. This official position played an important role in shaping the perception of the Nazi past. Survey data gathered in the former East Germany in 1995 and 2000 reveal a complex pattern of acceptance and denial of this historical past. There was a significant shift in the attribution of responsibility for the Holocaust, but no change in the perceptions of grandparents' involvement in it. Results are interpreted with reference to social identity theory, which provides a framework for the understanding of national identity, collective self-esteem and collective memory.

Unresolved Questions of German Medicine and Medical History in the Past and Present

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H. Kater
Keyword(s):  
Significant Influence ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
Sociology Of Medicine ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Victim Status ◽  
The Third Reich

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

Hitler, for Example: Registers of National Socialist Exemplarity in Contemporary Germany

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich

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.

Comrades Betrayed

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Social Death ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Great War

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.

“The Chords of the German Soul are Tuned to Nature”: The Movement to Preserve the Natural Heimat from the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich

1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alexander Williams
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Conservation Law ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Natural Community ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German People ◽  
State Protection

In the early 1930s, Dr. Konrad Guenther, a longtime advocate of nature conservation, was exhorting the German people to return to “the soil of the homeland.” In the past, according to Guenther, whenever the German people had been forced to respond vigorously to the pressure of hard times, they had returned to their “natural” roots. He called on the population to learn about the Heimat (homeland) and its natural environment, ‘not only through reason alone, but with the entire soul and personality; for the chords of the German soul are tuned to nature. Let us allow nature to speak, and let us be happy to be German!” The stakes were high, for if the German people failed in this way to unite into a strong, “natural” community, they would become “cultural fertilizer for other nations.” Following the fall of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Guenther became one of the most vocal exponents of the notion that conserving nature would aid in the cultural unification and “racial cleansing” of Germany. Indeed, Guenther and his fellow conservationists saw their longstanding dream of a nationwide conservation law at last fulfilled under the Third Reich. The 1935 Reich Conservation Law guaranteed state protection of “the nature of the Heimat in all its manifestations”—if necessary through police measures.

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