„Ära Voss“

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 279-316
Author(s):  
Ute Pothmann
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Family Background ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Self Image ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Egyptian Government ◽  
New Research

Abstract This article investigates one stage in the career of Dr. Wilhelm Voss (1896-1974) who was a chartered accountant, manager of the Reichswerke “Hermann Göring” and armament adviser to the Egyptian government after World War II. During the Weimar republic Voss was a respected association official and chartered accountant without a political background. Between spring 1933 and autumn 1934 he integrated himself fast and successfully into the Nazi regime. The article explores Voss’ actions, his motives and family background as well as professional points of contact to National Socialism. At the same time it reveals the difficult development of chartered accountancy as a profession in Germany around 1930 and attempts to professionalize the occupation by different individuals and organisations. This paper takes up new research approaches to the history of elites. The source material is evaluated on the four analysis levels of “authority”, “situation”, “profession” and “self-image”.

Wiederaufbau aus dem Glauben

Architectura ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-127
Author(s):  
Maximiliane Buchner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Religious Values ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Modern Style ◽  
Church Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

AbstractEuropean architecture in the second-half of the 20th century had many different roles to fulfil. Initially it sought to reconnect to what had been the ›modern style‹ before the outbreak of World War II, or rather, before the rise of National Socialism in Germany and Austria. This is true in a very special way for sacral architecture. After the human catastrophe of the Nazi regime with its destruction and desperation, all eyes were on the Church awaiting a statement. This was made not only through the erection of newly-built churches – in a density unique in the history of church building – but also in their contextual placement. The thesis of this article claims that the embedding of sacred rooms within newly-built architecture, such as in residential buildings, universities and student accommodation, is an ideal way of creating new – and hopefully better – societies based on a foundation of religious values

Nazi Germany's Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims During World War II and the Holocaust: Old Themes, New Archival Findings

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of

During World War II and the Holocaust, the Nazi regime engaged in an intensive effort to appeal to Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa. It did so by presenting the Nazi regime as a champion of secular anti-imperialism, especially against Britain, as well as by a selective appropriation and reception of the traditions of Islam in ways that suggested their compatibility with the ideology of National Socialism. This article and the larger project from which it comes draw on recent archival findings that make it possible to expand on the knowledge of Nazi Germany's efforts in this region that has already been presented in a substantial scholarship. This essay pushes the history of Nazism beyond its Eurocentric limits while pointing to the European dimensions of Arabic and Islamic radicalism of the mid-twentieth century. On shortwave radio and in printed items distributed in the millions, Nazi Germany's Arabic language propaganda leapt across the seemingly insurmountable barriers created by its own ideology of Aryan racial superiority. From fall 1939 to March 1945, the Nazi regime broadcast shortwave Arabic programs to the Middle East and North Africa seven days and nights a week. Though the broadcasts were well known at the time, the preponderance of its print and radio propaganda has not previously been documented and examined nor has it entered into the intellectual, cultural, and political history of the Nazi regime during World War II and the Holocaust. In light of new archival findings, we are now able to present a full picture of the wartime propaganda barrage in the course of which officials of the Nazi regime worked with pro-Nazi Arab exiles in Berlin to adapt general propaganda themes aimed at its German and European audiences to the religious traditions of Islam and the regional and local political realities of the Middle East and North Africa. This adaptation was the product of a political and ideological collaboration between officials of the Nazi regime, especially in its Foreign Ministry but also of its intelligence services, the Propaganda Ministry, and the SS on the one hand, and pro-Nazi Arab exiles in wartime Berlin on the other. It drew on a confluence of perceived shared political interests and ideological passions, as well as on a cultural fusion, borrowing and interacting between Nazi ideology and certain strains of Arab nationalism and Islamic religious traditions. It was an important chapter in the political, intellectual, and cultural history of Nazism during World War II and comprises a chapter in the history of radical Islamist ideology and politics.

Luther im Stummfilm: Zum Wandel protestantischer Mentalität im Spiegel der Filmgeschichte bis 1930

2007 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-198
Author(s):  
Esther Pia Wipfler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Silent Films ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Religious Subject ◽  
Commercial Enterprise ◽  
University Professor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Production Company

ABSTRACTThe “Luther film” is still a little-examined source for the Protestant self-image, despite the fact that the medium was employed since 1911 to portray the history of the Reformation. Of the four known silent films on the subject, two are preserved only as copies of a late censored version. There is a clearly recognizable paradigm shift in the portrayal of the reformer over the twenty-year span of these Luther films. Luther is transformed from the romantic aesthete of the “Wittenberger Nachtigall” in 1913 to the hero of the “deutschen Reformation” in 1927. Concerning the earliest films, made in 1911 (“Doktor Martin Luther”) and 1913 (“Wittenberger Nachtigall” renamed “Der Weg zur Sonne” in 1921), the circumstances of and grounds for production are no longer entirely clear. Most likely they were primarily concerned with commercial enterprise, but at the same time they reflected the spirit of the Luther-Renaissance in a popular way. Nevertheless the importance of the silent movie for the transfer of the patterns and images of Lutheran iconography into film cannot be underestimated. A fundamental difference from the later films is the focus of the earlier films’ biographical narrative upon Luther’s wedding. This approach would not be used again until after World War II. The influence of the church can first be demonstrated in the Luther film of 1923. The initiative for the film - in light of the meeting of the Lutheran World Assembly in Eisenach on August 21, 1923 - probably came from the Baron von den Heyden- Rynsch, who was at that time head of the Eisenach city Bureau for Art, Sport and Tourism. The highest church authorities supported the production in two ways: they offered scriptwriting advice and also eventually allowed the film to be distributed through the Evangelical Picture Association (Evangelische Bilderkammer|). However, the resulting film received mixed reviews. This was due not only to deficiencies in the acting, but also to the tentative portrayal of the film’s religious subject matter. “Luther. Ein Film der deutschen Reformation” (1926-1927) was much more professionally and lavishly produced. It completely served the national Protestant propaganda of the Evangelical League (Evangelischer Bund|), which founded the production company. The chairman of the League, the Berlin cathedral pastor and university professor Bruno Döhring, had a decisive influence on the script. The film, which would be in wide release until 1939, effectively extended the cultural conflict between the two leading churches, Catholic and Lutheran. It would finally lead to the sort of denominational conflicts that halted the tradition of Luther films in Germany. (Translation by Heather McCune Bruhn, Pennstate College)

scholarly journals Italy’s fascist past: A difficult reckoning

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Filippo Focardi
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
World War ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Benito Mussolini ◽  
Italian Fascism ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes

ITALY’S FASCIST PAST: A DIFFICULT RECKONINGIn January 2002, a survey conducted by a popular television program revealed that 25 percent of young Italians held a favorable opinion of Fascism and Dictator Benito Mussolini. Shortly thereafter, Italy’s most prominent scholar of Fascism, Emilio Gentile, warned of a “retroactive de-fascistization” in Italian society: the widespread tendency to cast fascism in a benevolent light forgetting, or softening, its repressive and brutal features. For many Italians, Fascism was very diff erent from Nazism and Communist Totalitarianism — it might have been an authoritarian regime but it was not a bloody one. This assessment was no doubt further conditioned by the politics of memory promoted at that time by Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right government. However the origins of this watered-down interpretation go back much further. The idea that Italian Fascism was not on a par with other totalitarian regimes took root in the collective conscience following the end of World War II, as Italy attempted to rehabilitate its reputation in the eyes of the world, hoping to be spared harsh judgment and punishment on the international stage. Its cornerstone was the contrast between Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. On one side, the brutality and ideological fanaticism of the Nazis and on the other, the Italian Fascists, who according to the narrative were over-bearing but not so criminal This distinction between Fascism and Nazism has permeated Italian public opinion throughout the history of the Italian Republic. It was shared by historian Renzo De Felice and pervasive from the 1980s onward in mass media which were inspired by the new wave of revisionism.Over the last twenty years, the ‘dark pages’ of Italian Fascism — from the regime’s anti-Semitic policies to crimes committed in the colonies and Balkan territories occupied during the Second World War — have been thoroughly investigated in the historiography. Broad sectors of the public still however consider Fascism a mild dictatorship not without its merits. The country that invented Fascism, therefore, is still struggling to come to terms with the legacy of its Fascist past.

Forging Germans

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Mezger
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
History Of Childhood ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Children ◽  
Oral History Interviews

Forging Germans explores the nationalization and eventual National Socialist mobilization of ethnic German children and youth in interwar and World War II Yugoslavia, particularly in two of its multiethnic, post-Habsburg borderlands: the Western Banat and the Batschka. Drawing upon original oral history interviews, untapped archival materials from Germany, Hungary, and Serbia, and historical press sources, the book uncovers the multifarious ways in which political, ecclesiastical, cultural, and military agents from Germany colluded with local nationalist activists to inculcate Yugoslavia’s ethnic Germans with divergent notions of “Germanness.” As the book shows, even in the midst of Yugoslavia’s violent and shifting Axis occupation, children and youth not only remained the subjects, but became agents of nationalist activism, as they embraced, negotiated, redefined, proselytized, lived, and died for the “Germanness” ascribed to them. Forging Germans is conceptualized as a contribution to the study of National Socialism from a transnational and comparative perspective, to the mid-twentieth-century history of Southeastern Europe and its relation to Germany, to studies of borderland nationalism and experiences of World War II occupation, and to the history of childhood and youth.

Public Criticism and Private Consent: Protestant Journalism between Theology and Nazism, 1920–1960

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-119
Author(s):  
Simon Unger-Alvi
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Direct Contact ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Limited Degree ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
Public Criticism ◽  
Two Kingdoms Doctrine

AbstractBy retracing the history of the Protestant journal Eckart, this article examines a theological forum in which supporters and opponents of the Nazi movement came into direct contact. Specifically, the article evaluates political ambiguities among religious authors, who had openly rejected Nazism from the 1920s onward but would feel compelled by theological considerations to remain loyal to the regime after 1933. Analyzing contemporary discussions of the Protestant Two Kingdoms Doctrine, for example, puts historiographical distinctions between “resistance” and “collaboration” into question. This study shows that Protestant intellectuals were able to voice a limited degree of public criticism until World War II. Their criticism, however, was often so imbued with nationalism and ideals of loyalty that it effectively helped stabilize the Nazi regime. In Eckart, even critics engaged deeply with völkisch and anti-Semitic ideology. Finally, this article also shows how these authors perpetuated nationalist ideas in West Germany after 1945.

The Film World’s Cooperative Store: Institutions and Films of the 1930s and 1940s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Meat Products ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Early History ◽  
World War ◽  
International Context ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

This chapter traces the early history of state-sponsored informational filmmaking in Denmark, emphasising its organisation as a ‘cooperative’ of organisations and government agencies. After an account of the establishment and early development of the agency Dansk Kulturfilm in the 1930s, the chapter considers two of its earliest productions, both process films documenting the manufacture of bricks and meat products. The broader context of documentary in Denmark is fleshed out with an account of the production and reception of Poul Henningsen’s seminal film Danmark (1935), and the international context is accounted for with an overview of the development of state-supported filmmaking in the UK, Italy and Germany. Developments in the funding and output of Dansk Kulturfilm up to World War II are outlined, followed by an account of the impact of the German Occupation of Denmark on domestic informational film. The establishment of the Danish Government Film Committee or Ministeriernes Filmudvalg kick-started aprofessionalisation of state-sponsored filmmaking, and two wartime public information films are briefly analysed as examples of its early output. The chapter concludes with an account of the relations between the Danish Resistance and an emerging generation of documentarists.

Recasting Bourgeois Europe

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier ◽  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Vulnerability ◽  
Group Representation ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
European History ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Country Analysis ◽  
Economic Stabilization

The author, one of the most prominent contemporary scholars of European history, published this, his first book, in 1975. Based on extensive archival research, the book examines how European societies progressed from a moment of social vulnerability to one of political and economic stabilization. Arguing that a common trajectory calls for a multi country analysis, the book provides a comparative history of three European nations—France, Germany, and Italy—and argues that they did not simply return to a prewar status quo, but achieved a new balance of state authority and interest group representation. While most previous accounts presented the decade as a prelude to the Depression and dictatorships, the author suggests that the stabilization of the 1920s, vulnerable as it was, foreshadowed the more enduring political stability achieved after World War II. The immense and ambitious scope of this book, its ability to follow diverse histories in detail, and its effort to explain stabilization—and not just revolution or breakdown—have made it a classic of European history.

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