scholarly journals Polsko-niemiecki pakt o nieagresji z 1934 r. – geneza i przegląd postanowień

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
Michał Koniecko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
French Military ◽  
The First World War ◽  
New States ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Free City Of Danzig ◽  
First World

One of the effects of the end of the First World War (then known as the Great War), was a significant geopolitical transformation on the map of Europe. Many new states were established at that time. One of them was Poland (the Second Polish Republic). The territory of the newly created state included part of the lands previously belonging to Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. The conceding of Greater Poland and parts of Pomerania and Upper Silesia to the reborn Republic of Poland caused a deep conflict between Poland and Germany. One of the main goals of the Weimar Republic’s foreign policy was to regain the disputed territories. The interests of both countries were therefore at odds, and one of the manifestations of the poor relations was the Customs War. Following Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power, Marshal Józef Piłsudski proposed France a preventive war, in order to remove the dictator from power. This was a turning point that led to an improvement in mutual relations, resulting in the conclusion of a non-aggression pact. Contacts between the two countries revived, and Nazi propaganda ceased its attacks on Poland. The period of warming ended with the first territorial claims against the Republic of Poland, including the incorporation of the Free City of Danzig into the Third Reich. Deterioration of diplomatic relations, combined with British-French military guarantees for Poland, led to the declaration of the Pact by Germany in April 1939. The aim of this article is to present the genesis and content of the Polish-German non-aggression pact and to analyze it from the legal point of view, as well as from the point of view of the intentions of the parties which accompanied its conclusion.

scholarly journals Een protestantse Flamenpolitik? Otto Bölke - dominee, heemkundige, Jongvlaams propagandist

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-327
Author(s):  
Winfried Dolderer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Local History ◽  
World War ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Political Radicalism ◽  
First World

De Duitse dominee Otto Bölke (1873 – 1946) was geboren en werkzaam op de Fläming, een streek ten zuidwesten van Berlijn die in de middeleeuwen door inwijkelingen onder meer uit Vlaanderen en Nederland was gekoloniseerd. De vermeende Nederlandse afkomst van zijn voorouders heeft hem levenslang geïntrigeerd en aangezet tot een intense heemkundige bedrijvigheid alsmede een vroegtijdige belangstelling voor de Vlaamse beweging. Vanuit die belangstelling ontbolsterde Bölke zich tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog tot propagandist van de Flamenpolitik. Hij was betrokken bij een netwerk van Duitse sympathisanten van de meest radicale, Jongvlaamse variant van het activisme. De stichting van België kwam voor hem neer op een ‘verovering’ door de franstaligen; de Belgische staat noemde hij een ‘fabriek’ tot Romanisering van de Germaanse bevolking. Met Domela Nieuwenhuis maakte Bölke begin 1917 in Berlijn kennis. Domela leefde in onmin met het burgerlijke bezettingsbestuur, maar beschikte over Duitse vrienden in militaire evenals uiterst rechtse annexionistische kringen aan wie hij tot op het laatst verknocht bleef, De talrijke protestantse dominee's in dit netwerk waardeerden niet alleen de Nederlandse ambtsbroeder, maar evenzeer zijn politiek radicalisme dat strookte met hun eigen antidemocratisch conservatisme. Bölke toonde na de oorlog belangstelling voor het Vlaams nationalisme en kwam uiteindelijk in nationaalsocialistisch vaarwater terecht. Hij was een typische vertegenwoordiger van een Duits-nationaal protestantisme dat uit het keizerrijk doorgroeide tot in het Derde Rijk. ________ A Protestant Flamenpolitik (Flemish policy)? Otto Bölke – protestant pastor, expert on local history, propagandist of the Young FlemishThe German pastor Otto Bölke (1873 – 1946) was born and worked in the Fläming, a region southwest of Berlin, that had been colonised during the Middle Ages by immigrants from areas including Flanders and the Netherlands. The supposed Dutch origin of his ancestors intrigued him throughout his life and inspired his profound interest in local history as well as his early interest in the Flemish Movement.During the First World War that interest turned Bölke into a propagandist of the Flamenpolitik. He was involved in a network of German sympathizers of the most radical Young Flemish version of the activism. He considered the foundation of Belgium the equivalent of a ‘conquest’ by French speakers. He described the Belgian state as a ‘factory for romanising the Germanic population.’ Bölke made the acquaintance of Domela Nieuwenhuis in Berlin at the beginning of 1917. Domela was at odds with the civilian occupying administration but had German friends at his disposal in military as well as far right circles favouring annexation, to whom he remained attached until the end. The numerous Protestant pastors in this network valued not only their Dutch colleague, but also his political radicalism that reflected their own antidemocratic conservatism.  After the war Bölke was interested in Flemish nationalism and finally ended up in the National Socialist arena. He was a typical representative of a German national Protestantism that evolved from the Empire to the Third Reich.

Conservative Liberalism and Ordo-Liberalism: From Child to Midwife of Crisis in Capitalism and Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-76
Author(s):  
Kenneth Dyson
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Friedrich Schiller ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
First World

This chapter reveals the extent of demise of economics with the Third Reich; the experience of academic isolation, harassment, and fear; the private comments of founding Ordo-liberals in this dark period and the literature they read (like Friedrich Schiller); the misjudgements many of them made and their attempts to draw lessons; and the stimulus to retreat into philosophy and history in the search for meaning. They sought an alternative to ‘vulgar’ liberalism, the failures in the market economy, and the deficiencies in democracy. Character, culture, principles, and rules formed the axes of their thought about a rejuvenated liberalism. The chapter locates the founding thinkers in the beleaguered cultivated bourgeois intelligentsia and its sense of a civilizational crisis of modernity that went back into the nineteenth century; in the disorder that was generated by the First World War and its aftermath, notably fears of communism and fascism; in the hyperinflation of 1923; in the Great Depression; and in brutal anti-Semitism. Prominence is given to Walter Eucken’s remarkable public lecture in 1936 on the struggle of science and his public debate in 1937 with a Nazi economist. The chapter examines how founding Ordo-liberals like Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke were viewed by fellow liberals like Friedrich Hayek, notably the emphasis placed on their strength of character and conviction. Finally, the chapter plots both the extraordinary growth of citations of Ordo-liberalism since the 1950s and its correlation with events; the shift towards seeing it as a cause of crises especially after 2009; and Ordo-liberalism in the context of post-1945 structural changes and debates about patriarchy and the role of women.

From illusion to destruction: the Germanic bid for world power, 1897–1945

1976 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Biddiss
Keyword(s):  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
First World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
World Power ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
First World

Over the last two decades none has done more than Fritz Fischer to compel major reinterpretation of German ambitions between the 1890s and the end of the Third Reich. In 1959–60 this Hamburg historian published two articles that hinted at the coming storm. It broke dramatically in 1961 with the appearance of his huge Griff nach der Weltmacht This densely documented treatment of Germany's objectives in the First World War was striking enough to become before long the object of official displeasure at Bonn. Nor did Fischer's thesis win any easy support from professional colleagues, who argued bitterly about it during the 1964 German Historical Convention. Its still wider impact was clear from the deliberations of the International Historical Congress held at Vienna in 1965. That same year saw the publication of Fischer's Weltmacht oder Niedergang, a brief volume in rebuttal of criticism, and soon scholars in many countries were swelling the tide of relevant literature. By 1969 this included Kreig der Illusionen in which Fischer greatly amplified his original arguments. All three books are, at last, available in English. The translation of Griff nach der Weltmacht dates from 1967, but only lately have the other two been similarly treated. It seems appropriate to review these alongside recent works by Dr John Moses, on Fischer's revolutionary place in a national historiographical tradition, and by Professor Norman Rich, on the German aims associated with the war that broke out in 1939.

From Second to Third Reich: The Problem of Continuity in German Foreign Policy

1979 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad H. Jarausch
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
German History ◽  
Political Repression ◽  
World War ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
German People ◽  
Nazi Era ◽  
First World

Ever since Heraklites' dictum “panta rhei,” historians have debated the relative priority of continuity and change. Although Nazi and Allied propagandists saw the Third Reich as the fulfillment of earlier traditions, postwar scholars stressed the unprecedented nature of its genocide, political repression, and external aggression. Sensitive to charges of “collective guilt,” many German historians preferred to see the Nazi era as something sui generis, an aberration from and not the culmination of German history. Handicapped by language, culture, and access to sources, American scholars often tended to concentrate on problems and themes within one of several airtight compartments such as the Wilhelmian Empire, Weimar Republic, or Third Reich. Because of efforts to restore the “historical consciousness of [the German] people,” the critical implications of Ludwig Dehio's and Hajo Holborn's revisionism were largely ignored. Hence the scholarly community reacted with anger and disbelief when Fritz Fischer drew attention first to the continuity of German expansionism and then to the continuity of historical apologetics in his provocative book on German Aims in the First World War.

Empire in the Heimat

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willeke Sandler
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Overseas Territories ◽  
First World

With the end of the First World War, Germany became a “postcolonial” power. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 transformed Germany’s overseas colonies in Africa and the Pacific into League of Nations Mandates, administered by other powers. Yet a number of Germans rejected this “postcolonial” status, arguing instead that Germany was simply an interrupted colonial power and would soon reclaim these territories. With the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, irredentism seemed once again on the agenda, and these colonialist advocates actively and loudly promoted their colonial cause in the Third Reich. Examining the domestic activities of these colonialist lobbying organizations, Empire in the Heimat demonstrates the continued place of overseas colonialism in shaping German national identity after the end of formal empire. In the Third Reich, the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft and the Reichskolonialbund framed Germans as having a particular aptitude for colonialism and the overseas territories as a German Heimat. As such, they sought to give overseas colonialism renewed meaning for both the present and the future of Nazi Germany. They brought this message to the German public through countless publications, exhibitions, rallies, lectures, photographs, and posters. Their public activities were met with a mix of occasional support, ambivalence, or even outright opposition from some Nazi officials, who privileged the Nazi regime’s European territorial goals over colonialists’ overseas goals. Colonialists’ ability to navigate this obstruction and intervention reveals both the limitations and the spaces available in the public sphere under Nazism for such “special interest” discourses.

The Postwar World Map: New States and Boundary Changes

1948 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-541
Author(s):  
Russell H. Fifield
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
New Members ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Family ◽  
New States ◽  
Free City Of Danzig ◽  
First World

A comparison of the postwar worlds of 1919 and 1948 indicates that the process of nation-building has moved from Europe to Asia. In the peace settlement after the First World War, the new states of the world appeared for the most part in Europe, but in the aftermath of the Second World War the new members of the family of nations come almost entirely from Asia.In Europe, three of the states that emerged from the First World War—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—have lost their national existence and are now numbered among the sixteen republics of the Soviet Union. The only new state from a practical viewpoint to appear in the European firmament is Iceland, which dissolved the personal union of a common king with Denmark dating from November 30, 1918, and became a sovereign republic on June 17, 1944. An even exchange may be noted in the incorporation by Poland of the Free City of Danzig, once under the protection of the League of Nations and in the creation of the Free Territory of Trieste under the protection of the Security Council of the United Nations.Although classification is difficult, the new states or near states of Asia fall roughly into a fourfold pattern: independence with partition, independence without partition, de facto or promised independence, and emergence from isolation into the family of nations.

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