Nazism and the Third Reich in Recent HistoriographyMichael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann, eds., Towards the Holocaust: The Social and Economic Collapse of the Weimar Republic, Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1983, 422 pp., cloth.Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter: The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933, Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983, xiv, 367 pp., cloth.Lawrence D. Stokes, ed., Kleinstadt und Nationalsozialismus: Ausgewählte Dokumente zur Geschichte von Eutin 1918-1945, Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz Verlag, 1984, 1032 pp., cloth.The Third Reich, 1933-1939: A Historical Bibliography, Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio Information Services, 1984, xii, 239 pp., cloth.Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-1945, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, xv, 425 pp., cloth.Hartmut Mehringer et. al., Die Parteien KPD, SPD, BVP in Verfolgung und Widerstand (=Bayern in der NS-Zeit V), Munich and Vienna: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, xvi, 677 pp.Elke Fröhlich, Die Herausforderung des Einzelnen: Geschichten über Widerstand und Verfolgung (=Bayern in der NS-Zeit VI), Munich and Vienna: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 262 pp.

1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-101
Author(s):  
Michael H. Kater
Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan

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.


2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-134
Author(s):  
David Bathrick

AbstractThe period prior to the 1970s has frequently been portrayed internationally as one of public disavowal of the Jewish catastrophe politically and cinematically and as one in which there was a dearth of filmic representations of the Holocaust. In addition to the Hollywood productionsThe Diary of Anne Frank(1960), Stanley Kramer’sJudgment at Nuremberg(1961) and Sidney Lumet’sThe Pawnbroker(1965), one often spoke of just a few East and West European films emerging within a political and cultural landscape that was viewed by many as unable or unwilling to address the subject. This article takes issue with these assumptions by focusing on feature films made by DEFA between 1946 and 1963 in East Berlin’s Soviet Zone and in East Germany which had as their subject matter the persecution of Jews during the Third Reich.


Author(s):  
George R. Mastroianni

Chapter 9 examines social-psychological approaches to understanding the Holocaust. Since Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments were published in the early 1960s, social-psychological formulations based on obedience and social influence have dominated the psychology of the Holocaust. There is also a significant critical literature that challenges some of the findings and interpretation of Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo as they apply to the Holocaust. Social cognition is the study of thinking as situated in a social milieu and offers a fruitful framework for considering the ways Germans thought about one another during the Third Reich. Modern approaches to prejudice and racism, especially the study of unconscious or implicit biases, may provide insight into anti-Semitic attitudes prevalent in Germany (and elsewhere) during the Nazi years.


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