Under the “Absolute” Power of National Socialism, 1938–41

2020 ◽  
pp. 117-169
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Military Training ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
The Absolute

This chapter analyzes the massive deterioration of the situation of Jewish veterans after 1938 and the intense debates between the higher echelons of the Wehrmacht, Schutzstaffel (SS), and Nazi Party officials over the remnants of the special status that they, at this stage, still enjoyed. It also examines Jewish veterans' ongoing attempts to preserve their honor as prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps following the mass incarcerations after Kristallnacht. As they were rounded up, physically and verbally assaulted, and deported to Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen, Jewish veterans not only relied on their military training and memories of the war to overcome the ordeal; they also remained committed to preserving their honor and their dignity. This also held true for those Jewish veterans deported to the ghettos of Lodz, Minsk, and Riga in late 1941.

The Contest on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:19–40) as a Reflection of a Religious-Cultural Threat

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Nadav Na’aman
Keyword(s):  
Persian Period ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Single Author ◽  
Cultural Threat ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Story Cycle ◽  
1 Kings

Abstract The article suggests that the story of the contest on Mount Carmel (1 Kgs 18:19–40) is a complete literary unit that was written by a single author in the early Persian period and inserted into the deuteronomistic story-cycle of Elijah. The story is entirely legendary and reflects the polemic of a devotee of YHWH against the contemporaneous spread of the Phoenician cult and culture. The attachment of the story to Mount Carmel may reflect the occasion of the establishment of a Tyrian/Sidonian temple on one of the mountain’s peaks, but this hypothesis cannot be verified. The story conveys a clear religious message of the absolute power of YHWH and the worthlessness of all other gods – in particular the Phoenician God Ba‘al – and of the fallacy of the belief in his divine power.

Ockham, John XXII and the Absolute Power of God

1986 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenio Randi
Keyword(s):  
Absolute Power ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
John Xxii ◽  
Power Of God

Fritz: Nazi Propagandist

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Socialist Movement

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.

Rituals of Humiliation

2021 ◽  
pp. 46-64
Author(s):  
Edward B. Westermann
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
German Society ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Abusive Behavior ◽  
The Third ◽  
Killing Fields ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter evaluates the significance of ritual and symbolism to the construction and manifestation of power under National Socialism. It underlines the importance of practices such as the mammoth party rallies at Nuremberg, the universal displays of the swastika on flags, pins, and armbands and the ubiquitous use of “Heil Hitler” as the standard greeting of the Third Reich under the Nazi regime. The chapter also contends that the creation of Nazi power was accomplished in no small measure by the use of ritual, and, in fact, ritual in the Third Reich served as an expression of “social power” that extended into virtually all aspects of German society. These celebratory events of Nazi power involved daily acts of verbal or physical humiliation of Jews, communists, and socialists, as well as organized and exemplary episodes of abusive behavior. Ultimately, the chapter studies the symbiotic relationship between violence, competition, and male comradeship and how it became manifest in the actions, rituals, and celebratory practices of Nazi paramilitary organizations through acts of humiliation by SS and policemen on the streets, in the concentration camps, and in the killing fields.

The Ideal Local Party Secretary and the “Model” Man

1964 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 229-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. S. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Direct Observation ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Party Secretary ◽  
The People ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Local Party ◽  
The Ideal

In what light does the Communist Party wish to project itself to the people? Is the local party secretary presented as the remote symbol of authoritarian efficiency, a reflection of the absolute power above? Or is he supposed to be a model of the nutrient “helper,” responsive to the people's needs and governed by humanitarian considerations? The actual quality of these relationships is of course inaccessible for direct observation, but we can examine some of the Communist presentations of the image and expectations in officially approved literary publications.

scholarly journals „Exerzierplatz des Nationalsozialismus“ — der Reichsgau Wartheland in den Jahren 1939–1945

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-102
Author(s):  
Wojciech Wichert
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
Forced Resettlement ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Experimental Training

The aim of the article is the analysis of German policy in Reichsgau Wartheland, an area of western Poland annexed to Germany in the years 1939–1945. In scientific literature German rule in Warthegau with its capital in Poznań is often defined as ,,experimental training area of National Socialism”, where the regime could test its genocidal and racial practices, which were an emanation of the German occupation of Poland. The Nazi authorities wanted to accomplish its ideological goals in Wartheland in a variety of cruel ways, including the ethnic cleansing, annihilation of Polish intelligentsia, destruction of cultural institutions, forced resettlement and expulsion, segregation Germans from Poles combined with wide-ranging racial discrimination against the Polish population, mass incarceration in prisons and concentration camps, systematic roundups of prisoners, as well as genocide of Poles and Jews within the scope of radical Germanization policy and Holocaust. The aim of Arthur Greiser, the territorial leader of the Wartheland Gauleiter and at the same time one of the most powerful local Nazi administrators in Hitler‘s empire, was to change the demographic structure and colonisation of the area by the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans Volksdeutschen from the Baltic and other regions in order to make it a ,,blond province” and a racial laboratory for the breeding of the ,,German master race”. The largest forced labour program, the first and longest standing ghetto in Łódź, which the Nazis renamed later Litzmannstadt and the first experimental mass gassings of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe carried out from autumn 1941 in gas vans in Chełmno extermination camp were all initiated in Warthegau, even before the implementation of the Final Solution. Furthermore, some of the first major deportations of the Jewish population took place here. Therefore in the genesis of the of the Nazi extermination policy of European Jewry Wartheland plays a pivotal role, as well as an important part of ruthless German occupation of Polish territories.

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