Foundation and Administration

This chapter provides a concise account of the Napolas’ foundation, and the bureaucratic tasks involved in their administration by the NPEA-Inspectorate (Landesverwaltung der Nationalpolitischen Erziehungsanstalten in Preußen/Inspektion der Nationalpolitischen Erziehungsanstalten). It also investigates the schools’ relationship with other organizations within the Nazi state, including the SA, the SS, the Nazi Party, and the Hitler Youth. Among these institutions, the competition to gain power over the schools was constant, with Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS, gradually gaining the upper hand. As such, the Napola administration provides a particularly apt case study of the constant polycratic wrangling which lay at the heart of the Nazi state, as well as mirroring the relative power and respective positions of the SA and SS within the dictatorship’s organizational hierarchy. The chapter concludes by exploring the Inspectorate’s methods of recruiting and controlling Napola headmasters (Anstaltsleiter) and teachers (Erzieher). Ultimately, Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust, along with NPEA-Inspectors Joachim Haupt and August Heißmeyer, desired to create a cadre of ideologically sound and fanatically loyal staff who conformed completely to the National Socialist ideal of the ‘Führer personality’.

The Anatomy of Murder: Ethical Transgressions and Anatomical Science During the Third Reich

While politics and racial laws drove many anatomists from the profession, most who remained joined the Nazi party, and some helped to develop the scientific basis for its racialist dogma. As historian and anatomist Sabine Hildebrandt reveals, however, their complicity with the Nazi state went beyond the merely ideological. Book cover image credit: The Anatomy of Murder: Ethical Transgressions and Anatomical Science During the Third Reich, Berghahn Books, New York, 2016. Used with permission.

Greece: A Procedural Defence of Democracy against the Golden Dawn

Greece not a militant democracy – Constitution rejects party bans – Challenge posed by neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn – Preference for a procedural approach – Not as passive as previously thought – Proactive use of regular law – Golden Dawn charged for being a criminal organisation disguised as a political party – Questions about the political timing of the trial – Importance of judiciary independence – Why not a terrorist organization – Suspension of party funding and other restrictions against Golden Dawn – Actions by state institutions as opposed to local and civil society – How to distinguish between procedural- and militant-democratic initiatives – Political rights of convicted party leaders – Benefits and risks of procedural model

Authoritarian Liberalism in Late Weimar

<Online Only>This chapter examines the interwar breakdown of liberal democracy in the Weimar Republic. Hermann Heller used the term authoritarian liberalism to capture the conjunction of political authoritarianism and economic liberalism ruling late Weimar. This regime attempted to depoliticize conflict, specifically in the economic sector, which had been threatening the interests of capital. It was ‘tolerated’ by the social democrats, who gradually abandoned democratic projects over the course of the 1920s, leaving behind not only radical options such as democratization of the economy, but also the parliamentary institutions of the Weimar Republic. The chapter concludes by examining how the seizure of power by the Nazi party, although marking a break, in the sense of heralding a regime based on mass mobilization, national redemption, and a cult of violence, continued the trajectory of depoliticization, signalling the ‘end of the political’.</Online Only>

The Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg

The former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg reflect politics and public debates in Germany between suppression, non-observance and direct reference to the National Socialist Past since 1945. Within this debate, various ways of dealing with the architectural heritage of the National Socialism exist. Those approaches are often contradictory. Since 1945 (and until today), the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds have been perceived as an important heritage. However, despite innumerable tourists visiting the area, parts of the buildings were removed and through ignoring the historic past of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds, an everyday usage of the area was established. As of the public representation of the city, Nuremberg’s Nazi Past was played down and hidden. Simultaneously, considerable efforts were made to maintain and renovate areas of the Party Rally Grounds, partly out of a pragmatic manner as well as to document and educate about history. The special role Nuremberg played under National Socialism, led to a particularly prominent culture of remembrance (Erinnerungskultur). However, this isn’t the outcome of a simple success story coming from initial public suppression to a conscious examination of the National Socialist Past. It has been a rather contradictory non – linear process, continuing until today.

Whose Memory is it Anyway? An Exploration of Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust

During the Holocaust, Hitler and his Nazi Party were responsible for the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews, as well as the callous slaughter of additional minority groups such as Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, the physically handicapped, mentally ill and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nevertheless, in Western consciousness, the Holocaust has essentially become synonymous with Jewish history and destruction. As a result, the non-Jewish victim experience has been effectively diminished in popular culture. This MRP draws on literature in cultural memory studies and survivor testimonies available on YouTube to analyze the power struggle between non-Jewish minority groups that were persecuted in the Holocaust and their Jewish counterparts to understand why the former appears excluded from mainstream Holocaust narratives. The goal: to emphasize that the Holocaust was not merely a Jewish tragedy, but a profound calamity for humankind.

Whose Memory is it Anyway? An Exploration of Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust

During the Holocaust, Hitler and his Nazi Party were responsible for the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews, as well as the callous slaughter of additional minority groups such as Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, the physically handicapped, mentally ill and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nevertheless, in Western consciousness, the Holocaust has essentially become synonymous with Jewish history and destruction. As a result, the non-Jewish victim experience has been effectively diminished in popular culture. This MRP draws on literature in cultural memory studies and survivor testimonies available on YouTube to analyze the power struggle between non-Jewish minority groups that were persecuted in the Holocaust and their Jewish counterparts to understand why the former appears excluded from mainstream Holocaust narratives. The goal: to emphasize that the Holocaust was not merely a Jewish tragedy, but a profound calamity for humankind.

Antisemitism in the Weimar Republic

Antisemitism was an integral part of the Weimar Republic’s political culture and was widespread in society. During the 1920s, hostility towards Jews was often radical and militant, complemented by their increasing exclusion in everyday life. Right-wing anti-democrats weaponized antisemitic conspiracy myths against the Weimar Republic, defamed as the ‘Jew Republic’. In Reich and state parliaments and in the party press, antisemites attempted to charge public discourses with antisemitism and, in doing so, change the unwritten rules of what could and could not be said. Dwindling republican forces largely underestimated the looming danger. The defence organizations of the German Jews, from the early 1930s, had hardly any chance against the superior numbers of the right-wing extremist movement under the leadership of the Nazi party.

The Ruins

This chapter analyzes music by composers who participated in a widespread artistic preoccupation with Germany’s ruined cityscapes during and shortly after World War II. These first musical responses to the war—written at a time of great emotional, physical, and political uncertainty—had a significant impact on musical mourning practices in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany, which became the German Democratic Republic in 1949. The chapter focuses on three examples by composers who wrote musical responses to the air war and went on to have successful careers in East Germany. These composers had very different experiences in the Third Reich: Rudolf Mauersberger was a member of the Nazi Party; Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau were political and religious exiles. Yet they each used music to make sense of wartime trauma, by transforming the aftermath of the bombing—the rubble—into an aesthetic object—or ruin.