History Of Nazism Research Articles

THE PROBLEM OF RELATIONS BETWEEN BIG BUSINESS AND NAZISM IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN

The article presents an analysis of the works of American and English historians devoted to one of the key problems in the history of Nazism - the problem of relations between the NSDAP and big business during the Weimar Republic. The collapse of the first democratic republic and the rise of the Nazis to power were a great tragedy for world history. What forces destroyed the Weimar Republic, and who is responsible for it, this question has always aroused the interest of historians. The literature on this topic is very large, so the main attention is paid to the works of the most famous American and English specialists. The article traces the evolution of historians' assessments of the role of the monopolistic bourgeoisie for the rise of the Nazis to power from the 1930s to the present day, highlights the stages in the development of American and English historiography, due to the change of research paradigms and generations of historians. Most American and British historians reject the definition of fascism given at the XIII Plenum of the ECCI on fascism as an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of financial capital. However, in most of the works, the responsibility of the business elite for the collapse of the Weimar Republic is more or less recognized. The article draws conclusions about the prospects and directions of further study of this problem.

BOOK SHOWS AND THE READING UNIVERSE PROFESSOR VK YAKUNINA

The research deals with creating a diverse reader image of an intellectual personality of a historian. V.K. Yakunin started his reading career as a student of Dnipropetrovsk State University in the 1960’s. During his studies he constantly visited the scientific library. It was at this time when he first became acquainted with rare and valuable editions on historical subjects. The reading experience of the historian is about 60 years. While writing his Candidate dissertation (1972) and PhD thesis (1990), he worked with a significant number of sources and literature, and he also used interlibrary loan services. He was a high-level bibliographer, he constantly searched and selected carefully new books of political and historical content. V.K.Yakunin began to collect his own library from the late 1960s. The analysis of his reader cards from the departments of scientific literature and fiction shows that scientist V.K. Yakunin paid primary attention to documents, book sources and periodicals. He perfectly knew the works of foreign historical science classics. He was interested in memoir literature. Psychological and art literature was not ignored by the scientist. The historian always turned to classical works and editions of contemporary Ukrainian writers. V. K. Yakunin’s private library totals about 2000 copies in Ukrainian, Russian and German. It has been stored in the Scientific Library since 2017. Each copy of the professor’s book collection received the stamp «Professor V.K. Yakunin’s Library». The chronological limits of the book collection cover the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century. Most publications are books of social and humanitarian directions. He was interested in the history of the 20th century: political history, public opinion, World War II, history of Nazism, the Ukrainian national movement. Memories held a special place in the book collection. Ways of acquisition to the Library: donations and purchasing. The historian was surrounded by books during his life. Thus, the value of the book collection of Professor V.K. Yakunin is in the presence of a large number of publications that give an idea of the state of book publishing in Ukraine and Russia and indicate the high intellectual level of its owner.

Louis Hamilton: A British Scholar in Nazi Germany

Louis Hamilton (1879–1948) was a British national that lectured at various institutions of higher learning in Berlin from 1904–1914, and 1919–1938. During the Third Reich (1933–1945) Hamilton was accused of being half-Jewish and his continued presence at institutions of higher learning was considered undesirable. Hamilton like other foreign born academics was coerced to leave Germany because the Nazi educational system viewed them as being politically unreliable. Hamilton’s experiences are an illustration of what foreign academics suffered during the Third Reich. The purpose of this article is to shed new light on the fate of foreign academics in Nazi Germany. Although the fate of Jewish professors and students has been researched non-Jewish and non-Aryan instructors has been a neglected topic within the history of Nazism.

Antrojo pasaulinio karo padariniai Lietuvos atminties kultūroje: kontekstai, vertinimai ir sampynos

Straipsnyje siekiama apžvelgti pagrindines istorinės atminties kultūroje slypinčias įtampas ir problemas Lietuvoje, susijusias su traumine XX a. antros pusės Lietuvos ir Vidurio bei Vidurio Rytų Europos istorija. Straipsnis suskirstytas į penkias problemines dalis, jose analizuojamos Europos Sąjungos politiniu lygmeniu priimtos rezoliucijos ir deklaracijos, skirtos sovietinio ir nacistinio režimų vertinimui; nacionalizmo ir antikomunizmo santykiui Lietuvos ir Europos atminties kultūroje žlugus SSRS. Analizuojamos komunikacinės atminties ir gyvų totalitarinius režimus išgyvenusių žmonių liudijimų validumo ribos ir disonuojančios šių režimų įpaveldinimo tendencijos bei kylantys iššūkiai viešajame diskurse ir įamžinimo erdvėse. Paskutinis poskyris skirtas metodologinei totalitarizmo paradigmos kritikai ir jos galimybėms atminties kultūros tyrimuose unikalios XX a. epochos patirties kontekste.

The Purge of the SA Reconsidered: “An Old Putschist Trick”?

Early in the morning of June 30, 1934, SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm and other leaders of the National Socialist storm troopers, theSturmabteilungor SA, were arrested by Adolf Hitler in the Bavarian resort town, Bad Wiessee. Further arrests followed across Germany during the day. Many SA leaders, various German politicians, two generals, some dissident Nazis, and some of Röhm's friends were shot. Finally, Röhm himself was killed late the next day. This was the only violent internal party purge to occur in the entire history of Nazism. Some ninety people were killed, with the greatest proportion being in Berlin, Munich, and Silesia. At the time the purge was justified by the allegation that the SA leaders were plotting to overthrow Hitler, carry out a “second revolution,” and seize power in collusion with former Chancellor General von Schleicher (also shot) and with the aid of an unnamed foreign power (France). The need to rid the SA of corruption and decadence was emphasized; in this context Hitler's alleged discovery of Röhm's homosexuality was publicized.

Nazi Germany's Propaganda Aimed at Arabs and Muslims During World War II and the Holocaust: Old Themes, New Archival Findings

During World War II and the Holocaust, the Nazi regime engaged in an intensive effort to appeal to Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa. It did so by presenting the Nazi regime as a champion of secular anti-imperialism, especially against Britain, as well as by a selective appropriation and reception of the traditions of Islam in ways that suggested their compatibility with the ideology of National Socialism. This article and the larger project from which it comes draw on recent archival findings that make it possible to expand on the knowledge of Nazi Germany's efforts in this region that has already been presented in a substantial scholarship. This essay pushes the history of Nazism beyond its Eurocentric limits while pointing to the European dimensions of Arabic and Islamic radicalism of the mid-twentieth century. On shortwave radio and in printed items distributed in the millions, Nazi Germany's Arabic language propaganda leapt across the seemingly insurmountable barriers created by its own ideology of Aryan racial superiority. From fall 1939 to March 1945, the Nazi regime broadcast shortwave Arabic programs to the Middle East and North Africa seven days and nights a week. Though the broadcasts were well known at the time, the preponderance of its print and radio propaganda has not previously been documented and examined nor has it entered into the intellectual, cultural, and political history of the Nazi regime during World War II and the Holocaust. In light of new archival findings, we are now able to present a full picture of the wartime propaganda barrage in the course of which officials of the Nazi regime worked with pro-Nazi Arab exiles in Berlin to adapt general propaganda themes aimed at its German and European audiences to the religious traditions of Islam and the regional and local political realities of the Middle East and North Africa. This adaptation was the product of a political and ideological collaboration between officials of the Nazi regime, especially in its Foreign Ministry but also of its intelligence services, the Propaganda Ministry, and the SS on the one hand, and pro-Nazi Arab exiles in wartime Berlin on the other. It drew on a confluence of perceived shared political interests and ideological passions, as well as on a cultural fusion, borrowing and interacting between Nazi ideology and certain strains of Arab nationalism and Islamic religious traditions. It was an important chapter in the political, intellectual, and cultural history of Nazism during World War II and comprises a chapter in the history of radical Islamist ideology and politics.

Nazis, Viewers and Statistics: Television History, Television Audience Research and Collective Memory in West Germany

As the most important medium of memory, German television has refracted intellectual debates about the burden of the past and influenced the popular perception of nazism for generations of viewers since the 1960s. However, limited access to archives and intellectual prejudice have so far prevented a full appreciation of television’s role in the evolution of German collective memory. This article addresses this gap in the scholarship on contemporary Germany by taking a closer look at the historical coverage broadcast by the West German public television station ZDF between 1963 and 1993. In the course of our analysis the development of the contents of three decades of programming on the history of the Third Reich is linked to the available qualitative and quantitative television reception data for the same period. The evidence suggests that West German viewers were quite interested in the history of nazism and the second world war. With the exception of the mid-1970s there is no indication that the audience systematically avoided the historical coverage of the ZDF. But the data also indicates that this surprising willingness to engage with the burden of the past reflects significant changes in media content and political disposition. In the 1960s, television recycled the apologetic plot structures of West Germany’s postwar historical culture. As a result, the programmes all but ignored the Holocaust and provided a very schematic, self-serving image of the past for the benefit of viewers who had themselves experienced the Third Reich. In the 1980s a more complex and self-critical vision of the nazi past appeared on the screen and was appreciated by a more diverse audience, including a majority of viewers who shared no personal responsibility for the crimes of the regime. But even the improved programming of the 1980s for the most part avoided any direct confrontation with the perpetrators and bystanders of the ‘Final Solution’.

Finding Light in the Darkness? The Historical Treatment of Genocide as a Template for the Field of Hate Studies

I am discovering that to teach about the history of Nazism, the Holocaust, and genocide is to enter into a profoundly spiritual experience. By this I mean that in engaging with these subjects, students of history must come to terms with some of the most elemental, existential qualities of the human potential for radical destruction and limitless hatred. The topics force us into a direct confrontation with the concept of ultimate evil: its manifold attractions; its power to deceive and destroy both perpetrators and victims; and yet at the same time, appearing in the midst of the reign of death, the possibility of overcoming evil with good.

The New Nachkriegsgeschichte (1945–49): West Germans in Search of Their Historical Origins

A MOST significant development has been taking place in the field of German history in the last half dozen years or so. Although largely overshadowed, especially in this country, by such emotion-laden issues as the Fritz Fischer debate and the ever popular history of Nazism, it has been quietly changing the terrain of German history and touching the historical consciousness of West Germans in essential ways. It is the maturation of the postwar period from 1945 to 1949 into a significant and sophisticated area of historical inquiry. In a larger West German cultural-political context this has meant the reclaiming of a piece of German history long regarded as lost together with the war and assorted eastern territories.