Genetics as a Modernization Program: Biological Research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes and the Political Economy of the Nazi State

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Gausemeier
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Biological Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
War Economy ◽  
The Third ◽  
Virus Research ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One

During the Third Reich, the biological institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft) underwent a substantial reorganization and modernization. This paper discusses the development of projects in the fields of biochemical genetics, virus research, radiation genetics, and plant genetics that were initiated in those years. These cases exemplify, on the one hand, the political conditions for biological research in the Nazi state. They highlight how leading scientists advanced their projects by building close ties with politicians and science-funding organizations and companies. On the other hand, the study examines how the contents of research were shaped by, and how they contributed to, the aims and needs of the political economy of the Nazi system. This paper therefore aims not only to highlight basic aspects of scientific development under Nazism, but also to provide general insights into the structure of the Third Reich and the dynamics of its war economy.

Carl Bosch and Carl Krauch: Chemistry and the Political Economy of Germany, 1925–1945

1987 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Chemical Industry ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Third ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Era

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.

Issues Surrounding the Development of the Neo-Nazi Scene in East Berlin

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Brothers
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
German Democratic Republic ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Culture ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

The rise of neo-Nazism in the capital of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was not inspired by a desire to recreate Hitler's Reich, but by youthful rebellion against the political and social culture of the GDR's Communist regime. This is detailed in Fuehrer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Naxi by Ingo Hasselbach with Tom Reiss (Random House, New York, 1996). This movement, however, eventually worked towards returning Germany to its former 'glory' under the Third Reich under the guidance of 'professional' Nazis.

scholarly journals Neurosciences in the Third Reich: from Ivory Tower to Death Camps

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael I. Shevell
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Physical Disabilities ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
The Political ◽  
Racial Hygiene ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Third Reich

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.

Teaching in Vain

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
German State ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter traces Carl Schmitt’s attempt, in his 1932 book The Concept of the Political, to quell the near civil war circumstances of the late Weimar Republic and to reinvigorate the sovereignty of the German state through a reappropriation of Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy. The chapter then examines Schmitt’s reconsideration of the Hobbesian state, and his own recent reformulation of it, in light of the rise of the “Third Reich,” with particular reference to Schmitt’s 1938 book The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes.

scholarly journals Help of neutral countries in the return to life of the Women deportees from Ravensbrück camp. The Spanish Women case

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 024
Author(s):  
Rose Duroux
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Third ◽  
Spanish Women ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
French Resistance

Nothing more usual than to find Spanish refugees of 1939 in the French Resistance as they continued their fight against fascism. Therefore, hundreds of Spaniards where caught in the nets of the Vichy Government and the Gestapo. They are imprisoned in the French jails (Toulouse, Montluc, Fresnes, Compiègne, etc.) alongside the French Resistant women. Both will be piled up in wagons to the camps of the Third Reich. Many ended at the women’s camp in Ravensbrück. Usually, the Spaniards were labelled “F”, “French”, because they were arrested in France. This “F” was part of the “red triangle” of the “political prisoners”. Some were even classified NN (Nacht und Nebel), i.e. called to disappear without a trace. As they were recognized by nobody (neither the French nor the Spaniards), this means: no mail, no parcels. They held on for life thanks to the links they forged randomly across blocks, satellite camps, languages, affinities... However, many died. For some of them, the release arrived in April 1944, thanks to “neutral” countries initiatives: in fact, a few Spanish women were able to slip into the Red Cross convoys transiting through Switzerland, which were initially reserved for French women. Others returned by Sweden. Others, finally, faced the apocalyptic evacuation of the camps of 1945 and the “marches of death”. We propose to study “the return to life” helps through some cases – obviously return to France since there could be no possible repatriation for these Spanish anti-fascist survivors, as the victory of the Allies did not affect General Franco’s power. After returning to France, this help continued for two or three years, in particular thanks to convalescent stays in Switzerland, Sweden and somewhere else, and thanks to one-off material contributions from the Swiss Grant (“Don suisse”) or from various organizations.

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.

scholarly journals Paul von Klenau og hans niende symfoni. Kilderne, værket, receptionen

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 229
Author(s):  
Niels Krabbe
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Music History ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ninth Symphony ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
Liturgical Texts ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One

Niels Krabbe: Paul von Klenau and his ninth Symphony – the sources, the work, the reception In 2001, the Royal Library learned about a comprehensive private collection in Vienna that contained music, letters and lecture manuscripts, photographs and other archive materials of the Danish composer Paul von Klenau (1883–1946). A preliminary survey of the collection revealed that the contents included a number of music manuscripts (symphonies, chamber music concerts and more), which were not known from the rest of the library’s major collection of Klenau works. The collection’s greatest and most interesting work was a major complete “Ninth Symphony” for orchestra, choir and four soloists in eight movements, for a Latin text with a mix of liturgical texts from the Catholic requiem and texts of unknown provenance.In 2005, the library succeeded in acquiring the collection and it was transferred to the Royal Library. Subsequently, the Danish Centre for Music Publication (DCM) organised a philological adaptation and published Symphony No. 9 for the purpose of the premier performance of the work, which duly took place 70 years after it was written, performed as a Thursday Concert in March 2014 and conducted by Michael Schønwandt.Klenau had worked in Germany as a composer and conductor in the 1920s and 1930s. He returned to Denmark in 1939 where he stayed for the rest of his life. Because of his extensive German background he did not receive high recognition in Danish music, despite the range and nature of his musical output. This was mainly because of his relationship with the Third Reich and Nazism, which affected his last years and his posthumous reputation.Symphony No. 9 was composed in the years 1944–45, and is a mix of requiem and a symphony, each in four movements. Due to the text, the work is both a traditional requiem and a requiem about the war. Both in its expression and in its length, it is probably the greatest symphony ever written by a Danish composer.The premier in 2014 received mixed reviews, and Klenau’s attitude to Nazism was discussed once again. The work was criticised for its eclectic character with its mix of late romantic forms of expression on the one side and its accomplished dodecaphonic passages on the other.The newly available Klenau collection from Vienna, including the treated Symphony No. 9, has nuanced and problematised Klenau’s position in Danish music history.

scholarly journals CZECHIAN GERMANS: THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL SELF-DESTRUCTION (1939–1945)

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Viktor Melnyk
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Functional Method ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Logical Sequence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One

Objective of the study: to classify and identify the main causes of the process of political self-destruction of the German ethnic minority in the territory of Czechoslovakia; to propose, substantiate and introduce into scientific circulation the concept of political self-destruction of the German community in the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which existed under the suzerainty of the Third Reich from March 15, 1939 to May 13, 1945. Methodology: Therefore, the journalistic and literary works of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were analyzed, as well as legal documents and diplomatic protocols adopted following the Yalta Conference (February 4 — F ebruary 11, 1945), the Potsdam Conference (July 17 — August 2, 1945). With the help of the traditional complex of historical and legal methods (text study, comparative analysis, legal analogy), were analyzed the content and external forms of legal succession of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in relation to the First Czechoslovak Republic (October 28, 1918 — September 30, 1938) and the Second Czechoslovak Republic (September 30, 1938 — March 15, 1939). Structural and functional method allowed to isolate the main reasons for the successful cultural and socio-economic coexistence of Germans and Czechs in the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under the auspices of the Third Reich in 1939–1945. The socio-psychological approach, in turn, determined the political-political characterization of the rise of interethnic hostility of the Czechs to the Germans. The article argues that the cause of the massacres of Germans by Czech fighters (actions with clear signs of genocide) during 1945–1950 was the transfer of the so-called «guilt for Soviet occupation» by the Czech collective consciousness to the Germans. With the help of English and Soviet propaganda, a negative image of the Germans in the mass media was simultaneously formed. Results and conclusions: The history of the Czechoslovak Republic of 1918–1939 is a prime example of the confrontation between spatial and ethno-linguistic political ideologues. On the one hand, there were Sudeten and Bohemian Germans, supported by the strong movement of the Nazis. On the other hand, the concept of Central European Slavic integration, known as «Czechoslovakism». The struggle between these two ideologues often falls out of sight of contemporary political scientists (political scientists) and historians. This article does not fill the gap, but aims to demonstrate the Czech-German ethno-political conflict of the mid-twentieth century in the form of a logical sequence of events that led to the collapse of both Pan-Germanism and Czechoslovakism. The bloody war between the Slavs and the Germans in the center of Europe ended with the victory of «third power» — ideology of communism.

Jewish Frontkämpfer and the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-116
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Other ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The One

This chapter examines the changes to Jewish war veterans' legal status after the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 and the ways in which many of these men tried to retain their sense of Germanness in the face of intensifying state-sponsored terror and persecution. Although the Nazis succeeded in banning Jews from the civil service and most veterans' organizations, this did not mean that Jewish veterans were abruptly cast to the margins of German public life. Not all Germans shared Himmler's radical vision of a racially purified Volksgemeinschaft. This inconsistency in experience — persecution on the one hand, and limited solidarity with the German public on the other — obscured the gravity of the Nazi threat, leading many Jewish veterans to contemplate accommodation with the Third Reich.

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