scholarly journals Sędziowie sądów specjalnych III Rzeszy i ich „zdrowe poczucie narodowe”

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 253-278
Author(s):  
Witold Kulesza
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
West Germany ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
Professional Careers ◽  
Nulla Poena Sine Lege ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Sense Of Justice ◽  
Law Professors

German lawyers jointly supported the National Socialist authorities, assuming that the law was Hitler’s will, resulting from the new criminal law being introduced, which violated the principles of nullum crimen sine lege and nulla poena sine lege. Judges of special courts (Sondergerichte) in the Third Reich applied criminal law according to a “healthy national sense” (das gesunde Volksempfinden), which usually meant heavy penalties, contrary to the elementary sense of justice. It was adopted as a rule that a crime is not only what is forbidden by regulations, but also everything that the authorities have not consented to. For any behaviour, even if not prohibited by law, the judges could sentence defendants to draconian punishments, at their “national discretion.” Law professors justified the lawlessness created in the Third Reich by claiming that it was a rule of law (Rechtsstaat). The criminal law for Poles and Jews of 1941 provided for the death penalty for all manifestations of “hostile attitude” towards the German occupier. Polish forced labourers in the Reich were punished with death for violations of discipline and disobedience to the German oppressors. Poles displaced from occupied Poland were assigned to work in enterprises and farms in the Reich. The special court in Breslau sentenced to death a Pole who defended his pregnant beloved woman, forced to work beyond her strength and abused by the German housewife, as well as the unfortunate woman herself. The same court sentenced a Pole to death for trying to protect his 13-year-old son from a German farmer, who was forcing the child to perform work he was physically unable to carry out. Special-court judges continued their professional careers in West Germany after the war and did not bear any responsibility for their crimes.

Forschungen Zur Judenfrage: A Notorious Journal and Some of its Contributors

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-415
Author(s):  
Reinhard Markner
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Many

AbstractAmong the many publishing ventures of the “Reichsinstitut für die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands,” the journal Forschungen zur Judenfrage (1936–1944) has gained most notoriety. In its nine volumes, various aspects of the “Jewish question,” ranging from the Jews in antiquity to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, were dealt with from a strictly National Socialist point of view. The ambitious project proved to be a failure even before the Third Reich collapsed. While some of the journal's contributors managed to pursue their academic careers in post-war West Germany, its founder, Walter Frank, committed suicide in 1945.

scholarly journals Niemiecka doktryna i judykatura wobec problemu odpowiedzialności karnej „sprawców zza biurek” — uwagi na tle koncepcji „Organisationsherrschaft”

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-327
Author(s):  
Dagmara Gruszecka
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
Traditional System ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Individual

The aim of the paper is to present the concept of Claus Roxin’s Organisationsherrschaft as an alternative to attributing criminal responsibility for crimes committed by Nazi “desk murderers.” This concept arose against the background of criticism, after the trials of Adolf Eichmann and Bohdan Stashynsky, of the particularly low number of convictions in similar cases and the numerous omissions of the entire German justice system. Under West German criminal law, a distinction made between those who order murder and those who commit murder on their own initiative meant that the above-mentioned perpetrators who passed on orders from above could only be found guilty of accessory to murder. The novelty of Roxin’s views, however, consisted in an attempt to combine the previous only individualistic perspective of criminal law with the idea of mass, bureaucratic murders. The traditional system of individual attribution of responsibility, as applied for ordinary criminality characterized by the individual commission of single crimes, must be adapted to the needs of collective responsibility, in which the organization (for example, an administrative structure) as a whole serves as the entity upon which attribution of criminal responsibility is based. The first part of the text discusses the main lines of argumentation presented by the West German jurisprudence in cases concerning high-ranking members of the state power apparatus of the Third Reich. At the same time, efforts were made to emphasize the lack of homogeneity of legal solutions presented in national criminal jurisdiction in West Germany and their unacceptable consequences. The second part is devoted to the basic theoretical assumptions of the doctrine of Organisationsherrschaft and its significance for the perception of the boundary between perpetration and participation in German criminal law. The third part briefly presents the contemporary reception of Roxin’s thought, as well as the main points of his criticism, indicating, however, how important it was to effectively prosecute decision-makers from the power apparatus of the Third Reich.

The Language of Ideology: Lingual Manipulation of Readers in German Literature of the Third Reich

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Michael Press
Keyword(s):  
German Literature ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Historical Argument ◽  
Underlying Basis ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
German People

In recognizing more than just hyperbole in their critical studies of National Socialist language, post-war philologists Viktor Klemperer (1946) and Eugen Seidel (1961) credit persuasive words and syntax with the expansion of Hitler's ideology among the German people. This popular explanation is being revisited by contemporary philologists, however, as new historical argument holds the functioning of the Third Reich to be anything but monolithic. An emerging scholarly consensus on the presence of more chaos than coherence in Nazi discourse suggests a new imperative for research. After reviewing the foundational works of Mein Kampf (1925) and Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), the author confirms Klemperer and Seidel’s claim for linguistic manipulation in the rise of the National Socialist Party. Most importantly, this article provides a detailed explanation of how party leaders employed rhetorical language to promote fascist ideology without an underlying basis of logical argumentation.

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.

Revolutionary Moment: Interpreting the Peasants' War in the Third Reich and in the German Democratic Republic

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Laurenz Müller
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
West Germany ◽  
German History ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
National State ◽  
Organic Community ◽  
German Revolution ◽  
The Third Reich

History textbooks speak of an American, an English, a French, and a Russian revolution, but historians do not recognize a “German Revolution.” For this reason the formation of a German national state was long described as an aspect of a German “divergent path” (Sonderweg) or exceptionalism. While this concept established itself in post-1945 West Germany, German historical scholarship had even earlier insisted on a uniquely German transition from the Old Regime to the modern state, fundamentally different from what took place in the other western European countries. Still earlier, German idealist thinkers had declared the national state (Reich) to be the German people's historical objective. Around 1900 the Reich was understood to be not a rational community based on a contract between independent individuals, as were France and England, but a national community of destiny. The German ideal was not a republic split up into political parties but an organic community between the Reich's people and its rulers. This is why German history had never known a successful revolution from below. During the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, this alleged unity was seen in a positive light, but after 1945 it inspired an explanation, which quickly became canonical, of why German history had led to a catastrophe. German exceptionalism was now understood, especially by German social historians, as a one-way street toward the National Socialist regime.

Exploiting Hitler’s Magic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Kurlander
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Campaigning ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter illustrates how the National Socialist Workers' Party (NSDAP) appropriated supernatural ideas in order to appeal to ordinary Germans, enlisting the help of occultists and horror writers in shaping propaganda and political campaigning. By exploiting the supernatural imaginary, Hitler tied his political mission into something out of the Book of Revelation, as one ‘divinely chosen’ to create the Third Reich. The chapter then looks at three case studies. The first assesses Hitler's approach to politics through his reading of Ernst Schertel's 1923 occult treatise, Magic: History, Theory, Practice. The second considers the NSDAP's propaganda collaboration with the horror writer, Hanns Heinz Ewers. The third delves into the relationship between the NSDAP and Weimar's most popular ‘magician’, Erik Hanussen. In coopting Schertel's magic, enlisting Ewers, and forming an alliance with Hanussen, the Nazis diverted the masses from objective reality and toward the coming Third Reich.

Ägyptologen im Dritten Reich: Biographische Notizen anhand der sogenannten „Steindorff-Liste“

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 120-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Schneider
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
John Wilson ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

Abstract The history of Egyptology in the Third Reich has never been the subject of academic analysis. This article gives a detailed overview of the biographies of Egyptologists in National Socialist Germany and their later careers after the Second World War. It scrutinizes their attitude towards the ideology of the Third Reich and their involvement in the political and intellectual Gleichschaltung of German Higher Education, as well as the impact National Socialism had on the discourse within the discipline. A letter written in 1946 by Georg Steindorff, one of the emigrated German Egyptologists, to John Wilson, Professor at the Oriental Institute Chicago, which incriminated former colleagues and exonerated others, is first published here and used as a framework for the debate.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Heins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Private Life ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Third Reich

This concluding chapter reflects on the development of German melodrama in the aftermath of World War II. It traces a sense of disillusionment with the Nazi “deployment of sexuality” in films and how it had prepared the ground for the renewed postwar cultivation of domesticity and feminine nurturance in West Germany. The return to private life and to puritanical mores in the postwar era was partly a response to the attack on “bourgeois” sexual morality that had been carried out by the mass culture of the Third Reich. Turning against nudity and licentiousness in the early 1950s could be represented and understood as a turn against Nazism. Thus, this “reprivatization” and newly conservative culture left its mark on West German melodramas of the 1950s.

The Sources of Hitler's Power

1942 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-408
Author(s):  
Waldemar Gurian
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
General Interest ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
German People

Are the Germans really behind the Nazi Government? Despite— or because of?—the steadily rising flood of books dealing with the Third Reich this question is answered in most different ways. There is no agreement concerning the relations between the German people and the National Socialist regime. But one's attitude towards the conduct of the war and the post-war problems is, to a large extent, determined by the opinion that one holds about these relations. Therefore, some remarks about the different answers which are given to the question: What are the sources of Hitler's power in Germany? may be of general interest.

Performing the Nation: Sports, Spectacles, and Aesthetics in Germany, 1926–1936

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 616-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Rossol
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Aesthetics ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Set Up

National Socialist propaganda has created an aesthetic legacy that is difficult to shake off. Filmic images of well-trained athletes preparing for the Berlin Olympics or mass scenes from Nazi Party rallies have become familiar features in history documentaries. While many of us lack personal memories of the Third Reich, we think we know what Nazism looked like. In addition, Walter Benjamin's concept stressing the use of aesthetics in politics has become commonplace in interpretations of Nazi representation. “Gesamtkunstwerkof political aesthetics” or “formative aesthetics” are terms used to analyze festivities and spectacles in the Third Reich, suggesting that the Nazis developed a specific style with a focus on aesthetics, symbols, and festive set-up. This allegedly distinctive Nazi style is emphasized even more by contrasting it favorably with celebrations of the Weimar Republic. Once again, the German republican experience is placed in “the antechamber of the Third Reich.”

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