scholarly journals PLANS OF THE NAZI LEADERSHIP OF THE THIRD REICH FOR THE OCCUPATION OF THE USSR

Author(s):  
Grigoriy Yu. Volkov

The victory over the Axis powers had virtually preserved Russia in world history. It was a great celebration not only of the armed forces, but also of ideas. The article widely uses Soviet and modern publications, by both Russian and foreign scientists, dedicated to the East Front of World War II. The criminal essence of Adolf Hitler’s personality, his personal traits, way of thinking is shown, the analysis of his statements, offi cial speeches, private conversations, «table speeches», «Mein Kampf» is carried out. It also reconstructs the thinking process of other Nazi civil and military leaders who acted together with their Führer in pursuit of the common goal. The article for the fi rst time, taking into account the logic of thinking of the leadership of the third Reich, traces literally by years that the war against the USSR was conceived as a total genocide and carefully worked out in all directions. The author concludes that the bloody and inhuman logic of the leadership of the German Reich, big entrepreneurs and bankers, members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and the Schutzstaffel, generals and soldiers of the Wehrmacht, and a virtual legion of various offi cials clearly shows that they were all united in their desire to «stop Russian history».

2019 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 51-63
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Wójcik

Der Artikel soll einen kurzen Überblick über die Entstehung und Verbreitung der Propagandatexte im Distrikt Lublin geben. Das Textkorpus besteht aus den Texten über den Distrikt Lublin mit der damals größten Anzahl der verlegten Exemplare. Die damals von deutschen Journalisten, Archivaren, Historikern und Volkskundlern verfassten Texte waren vor allem als Propagandamittel für den Gebrauch der im Distrikt Lublin eingesetzten Deutschen, die über den ganzen Distrikt verstreut waren, gedacht. Zahlreiche Autoren haben sowohl gegenwärtige als auch geschichtliche Themenbereiche ins Auge gefasst. Mit Rücksicht auf den geplanten Weitergang des sog. Nationalsozialistischen Aufbaus wurden verschiedene Themenbereiche aufgeworfen. Das Ziel, der von den NS-Forschern „produzierten“ Texte über den Distrikt Lublin war vor allem die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums auf den besetzten Gebieten.National Socialist propaganda texts in relation to the Lublin district 1939–1944Propaganda texts published in the period of World War II by German journalists, historians and cultural analysts first of all consist of propaganda materials dedicated to Germans and Volksdeutsche scattered around the entire district. The corpus consists of texts about the Lublin district with the largest number of copies published at the time. The propaganda texts created in those times also aroused interest in the problems of Germans and Volksdeutsche from the General Governorate in the Third Reich. In relation to the National Socialist plan of “Aufbauarbeit” the texts addressed numerous topics which required scientific research of the district’s area and a statistical analysis. The aim of these texts “produced” by National Socialist researchers concerning the Lublin district was primarily to strengthen Germanness in the occupied areas.


2021 ◽  
pp. 358-393
Author(s):  
Helen Roche

For pupils at the Napolas, the last few months of World War II heralded an inexorable transition from ‘total war’ to total chaos. Boys as young as 15 or 16 were called up into the armed forces, and many of the schools had to be evacuated wholesale in the face of the advancing Allied armies. This chapter explores the experiences of pupils from a range of different Napolas throughout the Third Reich, as Germany’s territories shrank around them. Some boys were forced to fight their ‘liberators’ to the last, having been drafted into makeshift units of the SS, the Wehrmacht, or the Volkssturm; others fought on willingly even after the armistice, unable to believe that the regime to which they had given their all had collapsed into utter ruin. Many were merely concerned to reunite themselves with their families, even if they were unsure whether any of their relatives remained alive, or if their homes would still be standing. Yet others simply wished to flee and avoid internment at all costs, once they knew that the war was truly lost. In this chapter, the last days of four different groups of NPEA are charted: Stuhm, Köslin, and Rügen, which had most to fear from the encroaching Red Army; Rottweil and Reichenau in south-west Germany, which fell into French hands; Göttweig, Traiskirchen, and Wien-Theresianum in Austria; and Berlin-Spandau and Potsdam, whose pupils were caught up in a series of desperate last stands as Hitler’s capital was finally reduced to rubble.


Author(s):  
Steven Michael Press

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.


Author(s):  
Pavel Gotovetsky

The article is devoted to the biography of General Pavlo Shandruk, an Ukrainian officer who served as a Polish contract officer in the interwar period and at the beginning of the World War II, and in 1945 became the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian National Army fighting alongside the Third Reich in the last months of the war. The author focuses on the symbolic event of 1961, which was the decoration of General Shandruk with the highest Polish (émigré) military decoration – the Virtuti Militari order, for his heroic military service in 1939. By describing the controversy and emotions among Poles and Ukrainians, which accompanied the award of the former Hitler's soldier, the author tries to answer the question of how the General Shandruk’s activities should be assessed in the perspective of the uneasy Twentieth-Century Polish-Ukrainian relations. Keywords: Pavlo Shandruk, Władysław Anders, Virtuti Militari, Ukrainian National Army, Ukrainian National Committee, contract officer.


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.


Author(s):  
Eric Kurlander

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.


Author(s):  
Klaus J. Arnold ◽  
Eve M. Duffy

In this introductory chapter, the author narrates how he searched for his missing father, Konrad Jarausch, who had died in the USSR in January 1942. After providing a background on Jarausch's nationalism and involvement in Protestant pedagogy, the chapter discusses his experiences during World War II. It then explains how Jarausch grew increasingly critical of the Nazis after witnessing the mass deaths of Russian prisoners of war. It also considers how the author, and his family, tried to keep the memory of his father alive. The author concludes by reflecting on his father's troubled legacy and how his search for his father poses the general question of complicity with Nazism and the Third Reich on a more personal level, asking why a decent and educated Protestant would follow Adolf Hitler and support the war until he himself, his family, and the country were swallowed up by it.


Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković ◽  
Klaus Schmider

The Second World War in Yugoslavia is notorious for the brutal struggle between the armed forces of the Third Reich and the communist-led Partisans. Less known is the fact that the two sides negotiated prisoner exchanges virtually since the beginning of the war. Under extraordinary circumstances, these early contacts evolved into a formal exchange agreement, centered on the creation of a neutral zone—quite possibly the only such area in occupied Europe—where prisoners were regularly exchanged until late April 1945, saving thousands of lives. The leadership of both sides used the contacts for secret political talks, for which they were nearly branded as traitors by their superiors in Berlin and Moscow. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of prisoner exchanges and the accompanying contacts between the German occupation authorities and the Yugoslav Partisans. Specifically, the book will argue that prisoner exchange had a decisive influence on the POW policies of both sides and helped reduce the levels of violence for which this theater of war became infamous. It will also show that the contacts, contrary to some claims, did not lead to collusion between these two parties against either other Yugoslav factions or the Western Allies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 163-204
Author(s):  
Caroline Mezger

Chapter 4 investigates the World War II mobilization of the Western Banat’s ethnic German children and youth into National Socialist organizations. It explores the evolution of the region’s (now mandatory) Deutsche Jugend, showing how—through the coordinated efforts of the German minority school system, the local youth leadership, and the military—almost all children and youth deemed to be “German” officially joined the organization. Not all individuals forced into the Deutsche Jugend, however, saw its activities as an onerous burden. Rather, even decades later, some of its former members appreciated their engagement with the Deutsche Jugend as a key “nationalizing” experience and as an avenue of great personal accomplishment. Within the organization, being “German” once again officially entailed defending the Third Reich, a calculation which would bring thousands of youth voluntarily and coercively into the arms of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS.


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