scholarly journals Hitler’s Voice

Author(s):  
Cornelia Epping-Jäger ◽  
Caroline Bem

This article examines the mechanisms through which acoustic-political power was claimed in the era of National Socialism. It shows that the “loud speaker” as a technical medium, framed as an extensively communicative apparatus, was constitutive for National Socialism’s political culture. Different operative scenarios of the loudspeaker are analyzed with regard to new forms of spatial-acoustic development. As a result, the article brings to light the temporal re-structuring by which the technically and medially performed voices of National Socialist speakers, and Hitler in particular, were established.

2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 499-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Götz Nordbruch

The assumption of a historical collusion between Arab-Muslim public opinion and Fascism and Nazism is widespread. This paper questions this assumption by reconstructing various Arab-Muslim reactions in the Eastern Mediterranean that responded to the rise and establishment of Fascism and Nazism. Scrutinizing the discussions about key elements of Fascist and National Socialist ideologies, the diverse and often explicitly critical stances expressed in journals, books and pamphlets of the 1930s and 1940s will be worked out. Religious arguments were not limited to religious circles, however. Even in liberal and left-leaning circles Islam was invoked in attempts to challenge echoes of authoritarian and radical nationalist thought among Arab audiences. For these voices, Islamic traditions were seen as shielding local political culture against the influences of National Socialist and Fascist propaganda.


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.


2019 ◽  
pp. 664-685
Author(s):  
Аndriy Kudriachenko

The article analyses the components of overcoming the national socialist past of Germany and the totalitarian legacy of the socialist era, identifies four historical periods, displays the fundamental difference and common features in the approaches of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic to the study of the national socialist past, and outlines a system of measures for the formation of political culture in reunified Germany. Various components of the policy of clear distancing from the Hitler regime and integration of former Nazis into new public institutions as a way to establish modern democratic foundations of Germany’s development are considered. The article emphasizes the importance of the generational change and critical public study of the painful past and an important role of the establishment of a new political culture. The growing public interest and intensive public discussions in united Germany related to the formation of historical memory are pointed out. The importance and significance of studying the GDR’s past and overcoming differences between citizens of the Eastern and Western parts of reunified Germany are emphasized. The article also outlines new approaches and visions of self-identification of a state, society and citizens based on the so-called constitutional patriotism. The author emphasizes that the German society has established the idea that any positive historical myths cannot become a basis for the genuine development of a country and that an antidote to the repetition of the terrible pages of history is not relegating them to oblivion but immortal memory thereof. Such an approach included an appropriate set of sociopolitical and economic measures ranging from property restitution and lustration to the payment of monetary compensation to victims of the regime and creation of memorial complexes. The author hopes that overcoming the burdensome Nazi and totalitarian past will continue to serve as a powerful guarantee of the democratic progress of modern Germany. Keywords: FRG, GDR, historical memory, World War II, national tragedy, historical heritage.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Murad Karasoy

National socialist education policies put into practice between 1933–1945 in Germany, has been under the influence of romanticism, which is one of the important currents in the history of German thought that began in the middle of the 19th century. Such “being under the influence” does not refer to a passive situation, but it rather means intentional “exposure” by Nazi ideologues. The meeting of Romanticism with National Socialism led to the most dramatic scenes of the history. Educational institutions, where the victims of war were trained, bipartitely fulfilled the task assigned to them regarding to ideological instrumentalism: to destroy and to be destroyed. Putting an end to both their lives own and the lives of others due to this romantic exposure, primary, secondary and higher education students have been the objects of the great catastrophe in the first half of the twentieth century. It will be possible to see the effects of German romanticism, through getting to the bottom of the intellectual foundations of the period’s tragic actions, such as burning books, redesigning the curriculum on the line of National Socialism, and preventing the dissemination of dissenting opinions by monopolizing the press. This historical research, which is conducted by examining sources like Arendt (1973), Fest (1973), Giles (1985), Bartoletti (2005), Herf (1998), Heidegger (2002), Hitler (1938), Huch (2005), Hühnerfeld (1961), Schirach (1967), Pöggeler (2002), Thomese (1923), Zimmerman (1990) aims to reveal in a scientific way that it is necessary to be careful against the extreme romantic elements in the practices of education.


Quaerendo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 284-304
Author(s):  
Gerard Groeneveld

AbstractDe Amsterdamsche Keurkamer, founded in 1932, was the first National Socialist publishing house in the Netherlands. Under the management of author and poet George Kettmann the firm grew to become one of the major cultural mainstays of National Socialism in Holland. Kettmann earned himself some sort of reputation in the late thirties when he brought out a Dutch translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In the years of the occupation his company succeeded in defining the position and character of the ‘official’ literature ‐ ‘official’ meaning in line with National Socialist ideology.


Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe

This chapter showcases a Dutch collaborator named Fritz. Fritz shared many of Tony's prewar conservative opinions in favor of the monarchy and traditional Dutch values, although he was of working-class origins, unlike Tony and Beatrix, who were Dutch bourgeoisie. But unlike Beatrix or Tony, Fritz joined the Nazi Party, wrote propaganda for the Nazi cause, and married the daughter of a German Nazi. When he was interviewed in 1992, Fritz indicated he was appalled at what he later learned about Nazi treatment of Jews but that he still believed in many of the goals of the National Socialist movement and felt that Hitler had betrayed the movement. Fritz is thus classified as a disillusioned Nazi supporter who retains his faith in much of National Socialism, and this chapter is presented as illustrative of the psychology of those who once supported the Nazi regime but who were disillusioned after the war.


2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-149
Author(s):  
Patrick Bernhard

Zusammenfassung Historisch betrachtet ist die Rentenversicherung einer der wichtigsten institutionellen Akteure des deutschen Sozialsystems im Kampf gegen die Volkskrankheit Tuberkulose, die noch zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts die Statistik der Todesursachen anführte. Wie der Beitrag auf der Basis umfangreicher Archivrecherchen zeigt, blieb die Rentenversicherung auch nach der nationalsozialistischen Machteroberung strukturell in erheblichem Maß in die öffentliche Gesundheitspolitik eingebunden und arbeitete eng mit den für die Tuberkulosebekämpfung zuständigen Stellen von Staat und NSDAP zusammen. Das geschah jedoch nicht ausschließlich, weil die nationalsozialistische Diktatur Druck auf die Rentenversicherung ausübte, wie nach 1945 in apologetischer Absicht zu lesen war. Neben Zwang spielten noch andere Faktoren eine entscheidende Rolle: starke institutionelle Kontinuitäten und ein spezifisches Traditionsverständnis innerhalb der Rentenversicherung, ideologische Schnittmengen im Denken von NS-Gesundheitspolitikern und leitenden Mitarbeitern der Rentenversicherung sowie Eigeninteressen von Heilanstalten, die das nationalsozialistische Zwangssystem für Tuberkulosekranke nutzten, um sich unbequemer Tuberkulosepatienten zu entledigen. Im Extremfall bedeutete das die eigenständige Ermordung von Patienten durch Ärzte der Rentenversicherung. Abstract Death and Social Security: The German State Pension System and Anti-Tuberculosis Battles under National Socialism Seen in historical context, the state pension system was among the most important institutional actors in the German social system in the fight against the widespread public health crisis of tuberculosis, which remained a major statistical cause of death at the beginning of the 20th century. Based on extensive archive research, this paper demonstrates that to a significant extent, the pension system remained structurally embedded in public health policy after the National Socialist seizure of power, working hand in hand with the NSDAP and the government agencies responsible for combating tuberculosis. Their close cooperation was not merely the result of pressure exerted by the Nazi dictatorship on pension insurance, as one reads in post-1945 apologetic texts. Alongside coercion, other factors played a critical role, including major institutional continuities and a specific understanding of tradition within the pension insurance system, ideological overlap between the thinking of National Socialist health policy-makers and leading state pension officials, and the self-interest of sanatoria, which used the coercive National Socialist system for tuberculosis patients to rid themselves of undesirable tuberculosis patients. In extreme cases, this meant the deliberate murder of patients by pension system doctors.


Author(s):  
Andrew Wright Hurley

This article contributes to our understanding of the continuities and disconnects in the way that ‘race,’ and in particular African-American culture, were conceived of in the long postwar era in West Germany. It does so by examining some salient racial aspects in the writings and production activities of West-German ‘jazz pope,’ Joachim-Ernst Berendt, between the late 1940s and the mid-1980s. I demonstrate that the late 1960s brought about a sharpening in talk concerning the racial ‘ownership’ of jazz, and that in these circumstances, Berendt proceeded beyond his earlier, liberal elaborations about jazz, race, and African-Americans to advance an inclusive, ecumenical model of ‘Weltmusik’ (world music). Germany’s National Socialist history figured in important ways in his conception of both jazz and then Weltmusik. Whilst he initially saw jazz as an antidote to National Socialism, by the late 1960s and 1970s, he regarded certain traits of jazz discourse to be, themselves, proto-fascist.  Far from being a boon, Afro-Americanophilia—or at least one strain of it—now became something from which to distance oneself. What was important for Berendt, as for others of his generation, was distance from the past, as much as seeking out racial Others in Germany, engaging with them on their own terms, and yielding to a new racial ‘relationships of representation’ (Stuart Hall). 


2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martijn Eickhoff

This paper reconsiders German reflection on National Socialist pre- and protohistoric archaeology from 1933 onwards. It tries to do so by means of a case study of the academic contacts between the Dutch prehistorian A.E. van Giffen (1884–1973) and his German colleague H. Reinerth (1900–90). The approach adopted here differs from traditional historiographical writing on National Socialist archaeology in two respects. First, in its analysis of the academic exchange between the two scholars, the case study seeks to bridge the classical caesura between a pre- and post-war period. Second, contemporary and historical studies of National Socialist archaeology and archival sources, as well as interviews, have been incorporated in the research alongside the usual publications of the scholars involved. It is argued that with the approach taken here we may arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the different ways archaeologists have reacted to National Socialism over the past seven decades.


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