Nazi Germany Research Articles

Etruscologia e ideologia nel XX secolo

Etruscology developed in the 20th century as a scientific discipline thanks to and against the ideologies of its time. In Italy, between Unification and the March on Rome, Etruscan studies were encouraged by an exacerbated nationalism. Once Unity was achieved, the Italians had to be made, considering the Etruscans the precursors of Rome and the ancestors of the Italians. Then, from 1922 until the end of World War II, Fascism favoured the structuring of Etruscology thanks to the Istituto di Studi Etruschi, which gave the discipline international visibility, but Fascism also oriented a whole series of Italian studies towards the idea of the autochthony of the Etruscans, against that of a heteroctony, promoted by Nazi Germany to identify the Etruscans as oriental individuals of an inferior race. Only slowly did Etruscologists shed the values associated with fascism and turn towards liberalism or communism to renew their conception of the origin, society and art of the Etruscans.

Cruising Europe in World War II: Epistemological Challenges of German Vernacular Trophy Photography

The Nazi regime outfitted the Wehrmacht with the best photographic technology and its soldiers were far better equipped than their allies or nemeses. More than ten per cent of the eighteen million German combatants possessed a fast-shutter 35-mm camera. German soldier-photographers documented their wartime activities extensively, in turn leaving behind a gigantic, private and largely underexplored archive that poses multiple epistemological and ethical challenges. Military historians and Holocaust scholars approach soldierly photographs primarily as sources of information, including proof of crimes. This article shifts these lenses and argues that reading them as visual images, and not solely as historical sources and circulating artefacts, reveals a medium that equally affects its practitioners as well as the observers. Drawing upon public archives and private collections, I focus on highly performative images of victory and conquest over enemy countries and peoples and conceptualise them as ‘trophy photographs’. I examine recurrent motifs within this genre, in particular sexual encounters with enemy women and photographs of male bonding, which arguably constitute the most prevalent images snapped by soldier-photographers who ‘cruised’ Nazi-occupied Europe. Borrowing from Queer Studies, the concept of cruising allows me to probe soldiers’ mobility in semipublic spaces and also acknowledge the voyeuristic and visually alluring quality of their photographs. Seductive, exciting, these trophy photographs lure in their audience(s) with sexually charged, often (homo)erotic overtones. In turn, these images provoke diverse ways of seeing and interpreting their content: how can we best frame the soldier-photographer’s gaze and capture the polysemic quality of the images, especially when dealing with violence, racism, sexism and/or homoeroticism? What effect do trophy images of conquest potentially have on the historical actors who shot and circulated those photographs and what impact do they have on contemporary observers? Finally, acknowledging multidirectional and fractious lives of images, how do we understand the complex relationship between public history and the ethics of seeing? Because photographic images are historically contingent and open-ended, this article casts light on the complexity of mediation and competing visions between diverse publics of the past, present and future.

Pacts of Molotov Ribentrop: Liebe war es nie

Many Lithuanians and even historians still believe that the fate of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia was already unconditionally decided after the secret agreements between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany on 23 August and 28 September 1939. In fact, the course of history might have turned out differently had it not been for the mistaken choice of the Finnish government and the self-isolation and indecision of the US with regard to the European situation in the spring of 1940.

History education as prevention: the topic of right-wing extremism in German educational media

The rise of right-wing populism and extremism has challenged Western societies in recent years and raised fears of the destruction of liberal democracy. Against this backdrop, it seems reasonable to encourage students in history lessons to study the rise of National Socialism in order to prevent similar developments today. However, researchers and educators have emphasised that ‘learning from history’ does not take place in a straightforward way; moreover, it is questionable whether contemporary right-wing extremism can be best understood by studying the Nazi era. In order to understand how history education could contribute to citizenship education in this respect, this article asks how the topic of contemporary right-wing extremism is approached in German educational media, and how it is linked to the Nazi era. Based on an analysis of the pedagogical approaches towards the topic in 28 history textbook series, it investigates how the pedagogical approaches, the narrative about right-wing extremism and the subject position of the reader/player are intertwined in two selected textbooks and in one serious game. In conclusion, the article reflects on whether the innovative educational design of the serious game could inspire history education to find new approaches to the topic and thereby to contribute to citizenship education.

Данциг или война? Тайная дипломатия Великобритании в канун нападения Германии на Польшу в 1939 г.

One of little known problems on the eve of the Second World War is secret diplomacy of Great Britain aimed at settling disputable problems with nazi Germany, Danzig and Danzig corridor including. Documents of the National Archives (London) make it possible to widen our knowledge of the secret Anglo-German contacts, reasons which made them to be possible and factors influenced on their failure. The analysis of the archival documents helps to come to a conclusion that the N. Chamberlain’s government up to the start of the Second World War counted on amicable agreement with Hitler at the expense of Poland, which in its turn influenced negatively on the talks between Great Britain, France and the USSR. Thus the Second World War became inevitable.

The Many Semantic Lives of Geopolitics: Evidence from the New York Times Archive 1900-2023

ABSTRACT Henry Kissinger’s death foregrounds a puzzle in the history of geopolitics. How did a word made infamous by Nazi Germany become so ubiquitous and popular in the English-speaking world? Was Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, responsible for its rehabilitation into respectability in English? Historians, geographers and political scientists have traced how Western geopolitical thought developed in the twentieth century through transatlantic imperial rivalry and knowledge field formations. But there is no quantitative discourse analysis of the many ways in which the word is used in the English language. Responding to this absence, this paper uses both quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis to study how the word was employed in the New York Times from 1900 to 2023. Analysis of this corpus, and select examples from it, reveals the limits of three common presumptions about geopolitics: that it entered English as a synonym for Nazi foreign policy philosophy, that its use carried a stigma, and that Henry Kissinger led a revival of the word from the 1970s. Rather, the corpus record reveals a term with many semantic lives, a stigma that did not endure, and a synonym for great power competition and resource rivalry whose popularity is due to many factors besides Kissinger’s influence. Cluster of meaning around rivals and resources, books and culture, and US power define the term’s use in American geopolitical culture.

Broadcasting Law and Gospel: Paul Tillich's Wartime Ministry to Nazi Germany

Abstract During World War II, the German theologian Paul Tillich, then a professor at Union Theological Seminary, partnered with the United States’ organization Voice of America to deliver over 100 religious addresses in the German language into his homeland. In these broadcasts, Tillich utilized the Lutheran categories of Law and Gospel to identify and discuss the sins of the Nazis (and Hitler in particular) and to remind the German population that there was still hope in redemption. Remarkably, well before the war's end, Tillich argued for German collective guilt and the need for the atonement and expiation of the German people. He continually warned them of impending judgment and inescapable punishment – both human and divine – as the Allies advanced on the battlefield in a race toward Berlin. Yet Tillich often tempered this focus on judgment with an emphasis on the Gospel, the certain hope Germans have in God's salvation. This prism of Law and Gospel pervades the religious addresses. I will place these broadcasts in the context of the war, the wartime work of Voice in America, and what we know of other religious addresses delivered over the airwaves to Nazi Germany, to reveal how Tillich preached resistance to Nazi Germany.

Karel Kachyňa and The Holocaust: More Than Films for Children

Karel Kachyňa and The Holocaust: More Than Films for Children examines three Holocaust-themed works, Golden Eels (Zlatí úhoři, 1979), Death of a Beautiful Deer (Smrt krásných srnců, 1986) and The Last Butterfly (Poslední motýl, 1991), by Czech filmmaker Karel Kachyňa during the normalisation period of the Czechoslovak communist era. This work seeks to challenge the critical reception of Kachyňa’s normalisation era (1970-1989) works, where a focus on his use of children’s narratives and crude humour during the period has had a diminishing effect. Engaging with legitimate concerns over Kachyňa’s ability to continue to work following the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968 in Czechoslovakia when many of his New Wave contemporaries like Jiří Menzel and Věra Chytilová were banned and some like Miloš Forman felt compelled to emigrate, this work explores how Kachyňa’s Holocaust-themed works address the filmmaker’s attempts to produce a humanist poetics in the face of a dehumanising authoritarian regime, despite essentially working for the communist regime he was attempting to criticise. In generating analogies between the Nazi regime and his contemporaneous experience under communism, Kachyňa provides a powerfully subversive body of work which this article argues is deserving of greater attention in scholarship.

What does voluntariness do to participation? Mitmachen in New Deal America and National Socialist Germany, 1933−1945

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the significance of voluntary participation to both liberal and illiberal societies. Based on conceptual discussions of the terms voluntariness and mitmachen, the article merges two exemplary studies of court cases in New Deal America and Nazi Germany. Both cases bring out how liberal and illiberal societies depend on, rely on, motivate, inculcate, demand, and try to enforce their citizens’ voluntary participation, which is best captured by the German term mitmachen. In both New Deal America and National Socialist Germany, it was evidently the voluntariness of participation that constituted what was perceived as a good citizen-subject. Yet both cases show citizens’ reluctance and even refusal to comply with the state’s demand for voluntary participation. They also exhibit differences in this regard. Whereas the defendants in the American court case succeeded in denying the state the right to enforce their participation against their will, for the German defendant, accused of undermining the war effort, his voluntary engagement for the National Socialist state in other respects had only mitigating effects.

The conundrum within “caveat lector”: Unraveling the dissoi logoi in the book banning controversy

ABSTRACT Having just passed the 90th anniversary of the book burnings in Nazi Germany, which began May 10, 1933, and the 70th anniversary of the publication of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451, it doesn’t take much imagination or hyperbole to conclude that controversies surrounding book banning in public schools and libraries across the country are very evident today. This essay argues that the book banning issue in the United States can most effectively be understood through dissoi logoi. We examine both sides of the book banning controversy: those entities that advocate for very restricted access to books and other materials, and those that offer a more unfettered approach. First, we look at the historical provenance of book banning. Then we examine Supreme Court, Appellate Court, and District Court opinions related to book banning from 1969 to 2009. In the current analysis, we look specifically at Florida, which has exerted a significant amount of influence in restricting access to books. And, finally, we look at policies that will afford decision-makers the opportunities to make thoughtful and reasonable choices about the books used in school curricula and holdings in public libraries.

Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi: Two 20th century philosophers of science and their present-day importance

Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi: Two 20th century philosophers of science and their present-day importance Ute Deichmann, Director of the Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, discusses two prominent 20th-century philosophers and their distinctive but equally significant approaches to science. Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi shared important aspects of their biographies. Originating from intellectual circles in the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy (Vienna and Budapest) around 1900, they were expelled from their positions in Austria and Germany during the Nazi era as Jews and finally settled in the UK. Similarities can be found in their resentment of communism and their convictions that personal freedom is essential for the conduct of science. However, their philosophies concerning science differ widely.

Zakonšpirované Slovensko 1938 – 1945. Niekoľko úvah nad tvárami neviditeľného spiritus movens ľudáckeho režimu

The paradigm of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (HSĽS) regime, as well as the persecutory measures implemented against fabricated “enemies of the nation” during its reign (October 1938 – April 1945), were based on conspiracy theories. This essay identifies the main ones, pointing out their genesis, intentionality, and ways of operating with them in political practice. The analysis shows that although many conspiracy frames used in wartime Slovakia correlated with narratives in other countries of the fascist Axis, they cannot be considered copypastes of rhetoric popularized mostly by Nazi Germany. The text promotes the idea that the conspiratorial thinking of the HSĽS already formed in the late Habsburg monarchy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the changes in international politics in the 1930s only had an effect on their firmer establishment in the political culture of the party and political preferences of its supporters. The basis of this conspiratorial thinking was the fear of liberalism, of the threat to the Christian faith and the Slovak nation by a group of highly sophisticated interconnected “pests” with destructive intentions. Until 1918, it primarily included the Marxist left, capitalists, freemasons, and liberals in general, and after the creation of Czechoslovakia, Czechs, and Jews to an increased extent. The essay emphasizes that precisely the argumentation of conspiracy theories (“imperialism of Prague against Slovakia/Slovaks”, “Jewish Bolshevism”) provided the legitimizing platform for the repressive policy of the HSĽS regime and authorized violence against entire groups of the population that did not belong to the “ingroup”.

Selling Jewish Victims’ Experiences During the Holocaust for Hard Currency: The Case of the Romanian Communists Compensation Claims Collection from 1970

Abstract In the 1970s, the Romanian authorities put together a large collection of compensation claim files of Romanian citizens victims of Nazi persecution between 1939 and 1945. The Romanian Communists’ scope was for a hard-currency settlement with the Federal Republic of Germany. In doing so, the Romanians claimed that the Federal Republic of Germany would pay for persecutions for which the Romanian state had been responsible. The selective denial of the Holocaust was the Communist authorities’ approach to the topic after the end of the Second World War. Especially after 1948, they carefully avoided tackling the issue of country’s own involvement in the persecution of its citizens, externalizing the blame on Nazi Germany. Additionally, in the official narrative the focus was on anti-Fascist resistance and Communists’ martyrdom during the Holocaust and not on Jewish sufferings. By analyzing different claim files part of the larger Romanian collection to be found in the Arolsen Archives I argue that Romanians’ plan of getting Germany’s money–and indirectly recognition of Germany’s responsibility for the Romanian authorities’ wrongdoings during the Holocaust – would have solidified the externalization of blame at international level on the long run.

The Image of Luther in the Nazi Era

The Image of Luther in the Nazi Era

Britain's Attitude Toward 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics

Political, economic, and ideological considerations have been major forces behind the Olympics since their inception. Numerous instances exist, including Hitler's attempts to showcase the might and triumph of the Nazi regime in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Japan's attempts in 1964 Tokyo Olympics to overcome the legacy of its World War II defeat, and the Republic of Korea's display of the success of its democratic experiment. In the year 1988 in terms of technology. Taking advantage of the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games, this study attempts to look into the strategies employed by Britain to stop its athletes from competing in those events. Confusion prevailed among the governments of Carter and Thatcher, as well as among the allied nations and the International Olympic Committee, due to the boycott's unclear objectives.

Lionel Munby, Marxism, and Local History

AbstractA member of the Communist Party for thirty‐four years, and a key participant in the post‐War Communist Party Historians’ Group, Lionel Munby (1918–2009) is not among that Group's best‐known historians. Yet arguably he was more typical of its membership and outlook. A prolific author, an extra‐mural department lecturer, he was committed to bringing history to a wide public, and helping ordinary people become architects of their own histories. He struggled to persuade the Group to take local and regional history seriously, and to overcome disdain for a type of history regarded as antiquarian and reactionary. Munby converted to socialism when he was a schoolboy and saw Nazi Germany at first hand. As an Oxford undergraduate, he organised the Oxford Left in the momentous appeasement by‐election of 1938. This article draws on interviews with Munby, on his writings, and on the archives of the Communist Party Historians’ Group. The investigation allows us to recalibrate the preoccupations of the Group, to explore its interface with what today we call ‘public history’, and to show how one historian fused socialist theory with histories of regions, landscapes, and local communities.

Sanskrit scholars in Nazi Germany

Abstract German Sanskrit scholars from the beginning of the 19th century addressed the problem of the kinship between the ancient Germans and Aryans – while romantic patriotism was gradually replaced by militant nationalism. After World War I racism, widespread not only in Germany, but also in other Western countries, became the essential element of the ideology of National Socialism. In the 30s all German scholars were forced to make compromises under the pressure of totalitarian power. However, only a few Sanskrit scholars can be called active supporters of the regime. They have different motives: from the frank careerism of Walter Wüst to the cautious conformism of Ludwig Alsdorf. Religious scholar Jakob Wilhelm Hauer claimed to be the prophet of the “Aryan Worldview”, and Bernhard Breloer was passionate about plans of building a new social and political system, in which the individual is completely subordinate to the state. The anti-Semitic policies and political persecutions of the Nazi period had disastrous consequences for classical German Indology.

Beyond victimhood and perpetration: Reconstruction of the ingroup's historical role in eight Eastern and Western European countries under Nazi occupation

AbstractThe Nazi regime's aggressive expansion across Europe during WWII created a landscape of suffering, resistance, and collaboration. How do lay Europeans today reconstruct their ingroup's roles during Nazi occupation, and how do different role representations relate to defensive responses aimed at protecting the ingroup from threat? We tested two theoretical predictions: Following the identity threat prediction, we expected that denying culpability but endorsing morally favorable group representations (e.g., victim‐heroism) would represent an ingroup‐defensive strategy, correlating with other defensive responses, such as victim‐directed negativity or victim‐blaming. Following the identity management prediction, we expected that precisely accepting culpability and acknowledging threatening representations (e.g., willing collaboration with Germans) would form the basis for a defensive stance and thus correlate with defensive intergroup reactions. Analyzing data from nine European samples spanning eight countries (N = 5474), we found support for the identity management prediction in six contexts: Lay representations as willing collaborators were associated with negative collective emotions and correlated with victim‐directed negativity, whereas victim‐hero representations showed no such connections. The remaining three countries revealed a mixture of the two identity accounts. We discuss implications for understanding historical representations and identity protection in groups that were both victims and perpetrators of massive intergroup atrocities.

Lithuanian laborers in Nazi-occupied Austria 1942–1945

The theme of forced and voluntary labor of Lithuanians in Nazi Germany has been nearly forgotten and not studied by Lithuanian historians in recent decades. Even less examined has been the forced labor and imprisonment of Lithuanians in Nazi-annexed Austria. Up to 70,000 Lithuanians could have been deported to Germany during World War II. This is a fairly significant part of the Lithuanian population, which has affected Lithuanian Poles, Roma and minority Lithuanians most severely. When assessing the types and scale of Nazi violence, apart from the genocide of the Jews, the conclusion is that it affected people in Lithuania most who suffered from forced labor and forced removal from residential areas. At the current stage of research, we can predict that at least a thousand Lithuanians, forcibly or voluntarily, ended up in Nazi-annexed Austria during World War II. The national composition was made up predominantly of Lithuanians, Poles and Russians. Lithuanians were transported to Austria en masse from 1942 to almost until the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War. The vast majority of Lithuanians brought to Austria worked in industrial and transport companies. The overview of the workplaces shows that the majority of the Lithuanians was concentrated in Vienna, Kapfenberg and Marktle. A smaller number of Lithuanians were employed by farmers in the villages. Part of the Lithuanian population came to Austria as political prisoners or for racial reasons (Jews). Another part was imprisoned while staying in Austria for disciplinary violations or attempts to flee to Lithuania. The imprisoned residents of Lithuania were mainly held in the Mauthauzen concentration camp and its branches (Guzen, etc.). At the current stage of research, it can be predicted that at least one hundred inhabitants of Lithuania of different nationalities were imprisoned in the Mauthauzen concentration camp. The revised List of 68 Lithuanians who died in Mauthauzen concentration camp (some persons may be Latvian residents) listed below in appendix 1 (list clarified by LGGRTC employee Stanislovas Buchaveckas).

“They Behave Like Jews”: Anti-Speculation Propaganda and the Creation of a Caste of “New Traders” in Lithuania in 1941–1944

The article analyses socio-economic propaganda campaigns that were actively developed in the Lithuanian press during the period from 1941 to 1944: 1) anti-speculation propaganda; 2) calls for Lithuanians to engage in trading (this can be visually called the creation of a cast of “new traders”). In 1941, after the occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany, speculative activities increased due to the difficult economic situation, the faltering supply of food products to cities and the interruption of the supply of industrial goods (for example, kerosene, textiles) to villages. The occupation regime carried out an active anti-speculation propaganda campaign, which manifested itself in three ways: 1) calls not to buy goods from speculators and to report speculators to the authorities; 2) promoting legal alternatives to speculation (such as commissions or barter stores); 3) intimidation through repression. The creation of the caste of “new traders” was based on the belief that Lithuanians would willingly take advantage of the Holocaust, when Jewish traders who had held significant positions in pre-war Lithuanian trade, especially in the private sector, were killed (or isolated in ghettos) along with the Jewish community. Lithuanians were urged through the press to engage in trade business, to create a new, nationally socially oriented, qualitatively different trade system. The network of trade schools had been actively expanded in the towns of the provincial regions. Despite their ambitions, these two propaganda campaigns did not achieve their goals. Speculation was active throughout the war, while its legal alternatives were unattractive and unpopular, and the actual practice of punishing speculators was far more moderate than the press calls for the death penalty. The creation of the “new traders” caste was also unsuccessful: although trade schools soon began to prepare new trade sector employees, relatively few were prepared, and the same press soon began to criticize “new traders” for taking over “Jewish speculation” and for tending to deceive buyers and the regime.