Hitler Regime Research Articles

War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans (review)

Reviewed by: War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans Frank Buscher War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans. By Ben Shepherd. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01296-8. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography of primary sources. Index. Pp. 300. $29.95. This important book marks the confluence of several relatively recent historiographical trends that have influenced military history in general and accounts of Nazi Germany's war in the east in particular. Military historians have shown a growing interest in the experience of the common soldier. Omar Bartov and other specialists have devoted much of their work to studying the motives and actions of the average German soldier on the eastern front. Christopher R. Browning's study of the members of a German reserve police battalion who had participated in the murder of Polish Jews further drew the historian's attention to the involvement of "ordinary men" in the Hitler regime's crimes. [End Page 867] Ben Shepherd contributes to this tradition by focusing on the officers and, to some degree, the soldiers of the five security divisions assigned to the Army Group Center rear area in the context of the Wehrmacht's war against Soviet partisans. Concentrating on the 221st Security Division, which operated primarily in German-occupied Byelorussia, he sets out to explain how soldiers and particularly field officers executed the German army's war of annihilation. Shepherd correctly describes the ruthlessness of the German campaign as "preordained" (p. 224) and the Wehrmacht's antipartisan fight as particularly brutal. Given the German army's institutional history, the attitudes and prejudices of its senior officers, Hitler's genocidal goals, and the chronic shortages of resources and manpower, it should not be surprising that midlevel officers adopted a harsh approach. At the same time, Shepherd's research shows that the Wehrmacht, an army in which eleven million Germans served during World War II, was not a monolith. The author detects considerable differences in the conduct of the different security divisions. Some relied on brutality at all times, while others, especially the 221st, sought to cultivate the civilian population for at least part of the occupation. Similarly, officers at the regimental and battalion levels often acted decidedly more harshly than those at the division level (the 221st may have been an exception because several of its regimental commanders did not resort to particular harshness). Furthermore, officers working in divisional intelligence sections preferred cultivation to the brutal methods favored by operations officers. The author posits that the officers' own proclivities and the conditions they encountered are vital to evaluating their behavior. Shepherd also finds that the anti-partisan campaign consisted of several phases. The brutality was at its worst in 1941, when the security divisions participated in the murder of Soviet Jews and other groups targeted for elimination by the Nazis. The next two and a half years witnessed a varying mixture of ruthlessness and attempts to cultivate the indigenous population. Shepherd demonstrates his mastery of the considerable literature in this area. For primary sources, the author relies on documents in German and American archives. There is, however, no evidence that the author visited archives in the former Soviet Union which have sizeable holdings of captured German records. Shepherd's monograph is well written, and his arguments and conclusions are sound. This book will appeal to experts as well as general readers with an interest in the Soviet-German war. Frank Buscher Christian Brothers University Memphis, Tennessee Copyright © 2005 Society for Military History

From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe

The German terms Lebensraum and Konzentrationslager, both widely known because of their use by the Nazis, were not coined by the Hitler regime. These terms were minted many years earlier in reference to German South West Africa, now Namibia, during the first decade of the twentieth century, when Germans colonized the land and committed genocide against the local Herero and Nama peoples. Later use of these borrowed words suggests an important question: did Wilhelmine colonization and genocide in Namibia influence Nazi plans to conquer and settle Eastern Europe, enslave and murder millions of Slavs and exterminate Gypsies and Jews? This article argues that the German experience in Namibia was a crucial precursor to Nazi colonialism and genocide and that personal connections, literature, and public debates served as conduits for communicating colonialist and genocidal ideas and methods from the colony to Germany.

Essence of Conflict: Cognitive Illusions, War Guilt, and the Origins of Appeasement

Experimental studies consistently indicate that human information processing and decision making violate basic precepts of rationality. Yet rational choice theory is increasingly used to model organizations, politics, and international relations. Experimental evidence of cognitive bias is often discounted as methodological artifact because analysis, organization, specialization, and presence of strong incentives are presumed to eliminate bias outside laboratory. A controversy in historiography of Paris Peace Conference of 1919 provides an opportunity to address that assumption. Did the vindictiveness of British and French peace terms; exclusion of Germany and Russia from peace conferences . . . foolish attempts to draw blood of reparations and war debts . . . usher in second vast military conflagration (Kennan, 1996)? Or, was peace treaty a flexible instrument crafted by relatively well intentioned and rational leaders (Ikenberry, 2000)? The extensive record of primary and secondary sources was used to reconstruct beliefs, strategies, and actions of decision makers over an extended time frame. That pattern was tested against three conceptions of rationality: The pure form of noncooperative game theory, semi-strong form of Williamson's contractual man, and strongly bounded form of behavioral theory. Hypotheses regarding structure and implementation of Treaty derived from these three paradigms were tested. Both semistrong and strongly bounded conceptions of rationality accounted for structure of Treaty. Only behavioral conception of rationality could account for systematic failure in treaty implementation and evolution of Allied policy of appeasement. This strategy permitted Hitler regime to repeatedly and unilaterally deviate from provisions of Treaty to improve its political, economic, territorial, and military position at direct expense of Allies. The tragic course of war that followed is directly attributable to policy errors of 1930's which derived from earlier errors in initial construction of Treaty.

Legitimating Nazism: Harvard University and the Hitler Regime, 1933-1937

The Harvard University administration during the 1930s, led by President James Bryant Conant, ignored numerous opportunities to take principled stand against the Hitler regime and its antisemitic outrages, and contributed to Nazi Germany's efforts to improve its image in the West. Its lack of concern about Nazi antisemitism was shared by many influential Harvard alumni and student leaders. In warmly welcoming Nazi leaders to the Harvard campus, inviting them to prestigious, high profile social events, and striving to build friendly relations with thoroughly Nazified universities in Germany, while denouncing those who protested against these actions, Harvard's administration and many of its student leaders offered important encouragement to the Hitler regime as it intensified its persecution of Jews and expanded its military strength. The few scholars who previously addressed this subject devoted insufficient attention to antisemitism in the Harvard administration and student body, and underestimate the university's complicity in the Nazis' persecution of the Jews. William M. Tuttle Jr., to be sure, criticizes Conant's unwillingness to help place German scholars exiled by the Nazis at Harvard, calling this a failure of compassion. Morton and Phyllis Keller, in their recent history of Harvard, similarly describe its administration as slow to appoint refugees from Nazism to the faculty, particularly Jews. They describe Conant as shar[ing] the mild antisemitism common to his social group and time, but then go on to state that an alleged commitment to meritocracy made him more ready to accept able Jews as students and faculty. The Kellers acknowledge that under Conant Harvard restricted the number of Jewish students admitted and hired few Jewish professors, so the trend toward meritocracy was limited. Tuttle, while conceding that Conant publicly criticized the Hitler regime only for suppressing academic freedom, and ignor[ed] other and related Nazi crimes, nonetheless praises him as one of the more outspoken anti-Nazis in the United States from 1933 until World War II. This, however, was hardly the case.1

Empedocles' Shoe: Essays on Brecht's Poetry by Tom Kuhn , Karen Leeder (review)

MLRy 99.2, 2004 541 be identified with National Socialism, forhe saw the Nazi Party as too dependent on flirtationwith the masses in pursuit of their vote. This view, firstadvanced in Junger's article 'Nationalismusund Nationalsozialismus'(March 1927), meant that his parting ways with the Nazis was only a matter of time; by 1939, Jiinger was putting together the allegorical plot ofAuf den Marmorklippen, a work seen by many as a thinly veiled objection to Hitler's regime. Berggotz has also furnished impressive commentaries (running forsome 160 pages), in which he draws on both published and unpublished material to elucidate impor? tant aspects of Junger's career in journalism. Especially valuable is the information contained in Junger's unpublished correspondence with his father,with fellow jour? nalist Ludwig Alwens, and with Ernst von Salomon. A few omissions ought to be rectified here: Junger's expression 'die Herrschaft der Minderwertigen' in 'Arbeiter und Soldaten des 20. Jahrhunderts' (1928) should have been indicated as borrowing directly the title of Edgar Jung's book; when glossing Albert Leo Schlageter, Berggotz should have mentioned Martin Heidegger next to Junger's brother Friedrich Georg as another author who wrote an important piece commemorating Schlageter's death; in the extensive commentaries on Junger's review 'Ein neuer Bericht aus dem Lande der Planwirtschaft' (1933), tne keyword 'Planwirtschaft' (which does not appear in the title of the book Jiinger reviewed) should have been explained with reference to Junger's as yet insufficientlyresearched participation in the 'Arbeitsgemeinschaft zum Studium der sowjetrussischen Planwirtschaft', a working group forthe study of the Soviet planned economy founded in January 1932; finally,the claim that there are virtually no pronouncements by Jiinger on Thomas Mann after 1945 (p. 747) and that of Mann's works Jiinger knew Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen and Der Zauberberg (p. 734) could have been qualified and extended if Berggotz had drawn upon Armin Mohler's diary of his time as a private secretary to Jiinger,where Mohler testifies to Junger's knowledge of Doktor Faustus and his praise (in 1949) for Mann's 'Roman eines Romans' (Ravensburger Tagebuch: Meine Jahre bei Ernst Jiinger,194950 (Vienna and Leipzig: Karolinger Verlag, 1999), p. 46). But these are all relatively minor points that should not distract the reader from the enormous scholarly value of Berggotz's edition, which is bound to become a standard reference work in the field. Lancaster University Galin Tihanov Empedocles' Shoe: Essays on Brecht's Poetry. Ed. by Tom Kuhn and Karen Leeder. London: Methuen. 2002. ?20. ISBN 0-413-75730-7 (hbk). Originating in a seminar held at Oxford in 1998 to mark the centenary of Brecht's birth, this collection can be read as a companion to Brecht's Poetry of Political Exile, ed. by Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) (reviewed in MLR, 97 (2002), 500-01). Tom Kuhn's introduction emphasizes the worldly, occasional, directly communicative nature of the poetry, combining the 'useful' with the pleasurable. Ronald Speirs on 'Vom armen B.B.' brings out the ambivalence of Brecht's persona while linking it to the man who allows at least a trace of idealism to surface even in his most hard-boiled poems. Hans-Harald Muller, Tom Kindt, and Robert Habeck provide an original deconstructive interpretation of 'Erinnerung an die Marie A.'. Hilda M. Brown examines 'Das ertrunkene Madchen', afterprovidingan immanent reading, in relation to other treatments of the theme and its republication in other contexts. David Midgley reveals new aspects ofthe city poetry ofthe 1920s by juxtaposingthe 'Lesebuch fiirStadtbewohner' with Walter Mehring's 'Des Tippelkunden Friihlingslied', while emphasizing the elements of irony and Gestus, the disjunctions between the 542 Reviews personal and the public, and the process of their overcoming. Elizabeth Boa looks at the eulogistic mode in poems easily dismissed as propagandistic and therefore, in view of the Wende and the collapse of Communism, as dated. Anthony Phelan offers a perspective on the drafts of Brecht's poetic version of the Communist Manifesto which allows a consideration of its relation to Lucretius, Marx and Engels, and the progress of World War II. David Constantine shows the dark side of Brecht in the pornographic sonnets, but places it in the context...

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers. The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military

On the murderous road to purity Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, eliminating Jews from the rest of the population proved more difficult than he'd anticipated. Nowhere was that process more contradictory and confused than in the German military. Bryan Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or partial-Jews (Mischlinge), in the wake of laws first enacted in the mid-1930s. He demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought - perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals. A great many of these men did not even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht, which under Hitler was forced to look deeply into the racial ancestry of its soldiers. The process of investigation and removal, however, was marred by a highly inconsistent application of Nazi law that produced numerous exemption orders, many bearing Hitler's own signature. Inevitably, Nazi politics trumped military logic, making it virtually impossible for these soldiers to escape the fate of millions of other victims of the Third Reich. Rigg's groundbreaking study exposes from yet another angle the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's regime.

Plays of Domination and Submission in Thomas Bernhard's "Ritter", "Dene", "Voss" (1986) and Werner Schwab's "Die Prasidentinnen" (1990)

United in Opposites Before Claus Peymann integrated the production into the Spielplan for Vienna's Burgtheater, Thomas Bernhard's Ritter, Dene, Voss premiered at the Salzburger Festspiele in 1986.x Bernhard's play, its production by director Claus Peymann and the two theater sites document to what extent Bernhard became one of the best known and most often performed playwrights in the '80s. Furthermore, Bernhard's affinity for and familiarity with the German-speaking stage is evident from the naming of his play after three outstanding and intelligente Schauspieler: Ilse Ritter, Kirsten Dene and Gert Voss.2 Shortly after Bernhard died in 1989, Werner Schwab saw his first play, Die Prasidentinnen, performed at Vienna's Kunstlerhaus, a theater that stands in close proximity to the Burgtheater geographically, but one whose artistic profile sets it far apart from the most established German-language theater.3 Unlike the Burg, with its conspicuous position within German speaking theater, the Kunstlerhaus provides a venue for presenting alternative and/or unknown artists and arts. As disparate as these two institutions are in terms of the degree of recognition bestowed on authors whose works are presented there, Schwab would nevertheless soon become Austria's new enfant terriblean unwitting heir to the Bernhard legacy, as it were. julian Preece aptly summarizes the Schwab phenomenon as follows: Werner Schwab, who died on New Year's Day 1994 a few weeks before his thirty-sixth birthday, was the German-speaking theatre's most exciting new discovery in the early 1990s. His rapid fame and critical recognition, prolific output (more than a dozen plays, possibly as many as twenty, in roughly five years), and his skill in cultivating a public persona to match the sometimes outrageous content of his plays, are unparalleled in recent times. (Use of Language 267) Whereas Bernhard made his way from the periphery of the literary establishment in the '60s to the center in the '80s, Schwab's early death shrouded his public persona in the aura of an outsider, a true Sturmer und Dranger. Despite being a generation apart and with different literary careers, both authors shared painful experiences, among them the stigmatization of a lower-class background in the Austrian provinces. Their difficult upbringing may be one reason both male authors shared a biting criticism of Austria's postwar society and sensitivity for a hypocritical society that nestled itself in the self-delusional position of being the first victim of the Hitler regime. The two authors took hostage of this comfortable lie in order to deconstruct it in their works, either by theme and/or by a playful, yet relentless use of language. Finally, both authors knew how to play for the public the role of genius as a lonesome outsider. This resemblance between the two authors is as striking as the contrast between the institutions that premiered Ritter, Dene, Voss and Die Prasidentinnen: these two Austrian men and their plays are united in opposites.4 At first glance the differences between the plays are perhaps more startling than their similarities, but on closer examination the plays in fact demonstrate structural parallels that shed light on plays of domination and submission common to both works. With its provincial setting, Schwab's Die Prasidentinnen falls easily into the category of anti-Heimat literature and has abundant markers of the kleinstburgerliche (13) provincial milieu of its three single women protagonists-Erna, Grete, and Mariedl: setting (kitchen), costumes (apron, tasteless cloth of poor quality), and language (the semi-dialect reveals their low level of education). Both Erna and Grete receive a small pension, and Mariedl seems to have no steady income at all. Moreover, their provincialism and social status is marked by the impression that they might not have seen Austria's capital. In stark contrast, Bernhard's .Ritte/; Dene, Voss involves three siblings from Vienna's upper echelon-heirs of the famous Wittgenstein family who reside in a Herrschaftsvilla (8). …

Rhinoceros (review)

Absurdist playwrights question the presumed normalcy of the human condition. In Rhinoceros, characters converse about syllogisms and argue the difference between absurdity and madness. This play speaks to the absurd nature of fascist conformity—be it Hitler's regime during World War II or the religious zealotry of recent events. Berkeley Repertory Theatre stages Ionesco's comments on socially absurd ideology in highly physical ways: actors' bodies adopt rhinoceros-like mannerisms; the set transforms into a rhinoceros horn; and spatial orientation eventually rotates ninety degrees southward such that the front door opens up from the ground. Director Barbara Damashek embraces Ionesco's belief that the stage and its properties should speak for characters whose words are hopelessly inadequate.

Wilhelm Ropke: Swiss localist, global economist

Wilhelm Ropke is probably the most unjustly neglected economist and social critic of the twentieth century. Exiled by Hitler's regime, Ropke was a passionate critic of socialism and the welfare state who was nonetheless keenly attuned to the limits of capitalism. John Zmirak's Wilhelm Ropke, written with the touch of an accomplished writer and journalist, ably demonstrates that Ropke's humane yet sophisticated Third Way economics can play a vital role in shaping appropriate policies to reflect the growing communitarian consensus.

The Three Phases of Arendt’s Theory of Totalitarianism

HANNAH Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, first published in 1951, is a bewilderingly wide-ranging work, a book about much more than just totalitarianism and its immediate origins.1 In fact, it is not really about those immediate origins at all. The book’s peculiar organization creates a certain ambiguity regarding its intended subject-matter and scope.2 The first part, “Antisemitism ,” tells the story of the rise of modern, secular anti-Semitism (as distinct from what the author calls “religious Jew-hatred”) up to the turn of the twentieth century, and ends with the Dreyfus affair in France—a “dress rehearsal,” in Arendt’s words, for things still worse to come (10). The second part, “Imperialism,” surveys an assortment of pathologies in the world politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leading to (but not directly involving) the First World War. This part of the book examines the European powers’ rapacious expansionist policies in Africa and Asia—in which overseas investment became the pretext for raw, openly racist exploitation—and the concomitant emergence in Central and Eastern Europe of “tribalist” ethnic movements whose (failed) ambition was the replication of those SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Summer 2002) The Three Phases of Arendt’s Theory of Totalitarianism* BY ROY T. TSAO *Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the University of Virginia and at the conference commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of The Origins of Totalitarianism hosted by the Hannah Arendt-Zentrum at Carl Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany . I am grateful to Joshua Dienstag and Antonia Grunenberg, respectively, for arranging these two occasions, and also to the members of the audience at each—especially Lawrie Balfour, Wolfgang Heuer, George Klosko, Allan Megill, Alfons Söllner, and Zoltan Szankay—for their helpful comments and criticisms. I would also like to thank Margaret Canovan, George Kateb, and Jerome Kohn for their advice and encouragement. imperialist policies on the European continent. Only in part III, “Totalitarianism,” does the author turn to the subject of totalitarianism itself. But here the diligent reader meets a surprise: this third part of the book makes remarkably little direct reference to the 300 pages that precede it, and confounds the expectation of a clear convergence of the tributary streams of historical narrative that flow through the first two parts. What the reader encounters instead in part III is an extended analysis of what Arendt insists is a wholly unprecedented kind of political organization, one embodied solely—and equally—in the regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Given the contents of the first two parts of the book, with their focus on anti-Semitism and tribalist racism, one obvious puzzle is the unexpected shift from what had seemed to be a story of Nazism’s sources to an analysis that accords equal standing to what she invariably calls Stalin’s “Bolshevism” as well. (Her reasons for preferring that term to “Stalinism” will be taken up in the second part of this essay.) But there is a similar lack of explicit continuity with the first two parts of the book in her actual treatment of the Nazi dictatorship itself. For instance, the argument of the third part never follows up on the seemingly anticipatory claim in part II that “African colonial possessions became the most fertile soil for the flowering of what later was to become the Nazi elite” (206). Such puzzles are compounded by the author’s own curious silence throughout the book—the title itself aside— concerning the intended structure of its overall argument. The three separate parts share only a short preface of less than three pages, which largely manages to avoid the question. Moreover, the text as we read it today omits the “Concluding Remarks” of the book’s original 1951 edition, which had at least gestured toward a comprehensive perspective on the whole (though without really resolving these puzzles). In place of those “Concluding Remarks,” the later editions of the book—starting with the 1955 German edition, and then the revised English-language edition of 1958—contain a new chapter on totalitarianism, “Ideology and 580 SOCIAL RESEARCH Terror.”3 Yet that new chapter only further compounds the reader’s disorientation, for...

Arendt’s Concept and Description of Totalitarianism

THE enormous complexity of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism arises in large measure from its interweaving of a concept of totalitarianism with a description of the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin.1 Today, after the disappearance of those regimes, the former concern may seem the more important ; yet to neglect the reason that Arendt wrote her book—the fact that Nazism and Stalinism appeared in the world in the second quarter of the twentieth century as events without historical precedent—is to risk conceptual emptiness.2 The intertwining and overlapping of concept and description have given rise to difficult questions and genuine confusion. Was Arendt crediting Hitler and Stalin, let alone any of their henchmen, with an awareness of her concept of totalitarianism? Indeed, how likely is it that these “nonpersons” and “nonentities,” as she called them both, were conceptually guided at all? Or, on the contrary, was Arendt herself aware that her concept of totalitarianism could become fully meaningful only after the regimes she described had come to an end? What I hope to suggest in this essay is the relevance of Arendt’s writing on totalitarianism for politics today, especially her understanding of the status of the totalitarian crime against humanity and her concomitant notion of the right to have rights. I think that many of us have heard enough about an “evil empire” and more recently about an “axis of evil” to question in those expressions, and in those who employ them, what precisely is meant by evil. For her part, half a century ago, Arendt described SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 69, No. 2 (Summer 2002) Arendt’s Concept and Description of Totalitarianism BY JEROME KOHN radical evil in ways that have become increasingly cogent and alarming. She gives her readers no comfort at all, either in tracing the conditions of that evil, or in delineating the sort of person who is capable today and in the future, and anywhere on earth, of performing crimes against humanity. Nor does she shrink from the task of spelling out how the recurrence of such crimes can be prevented, which would entail the urgent but extremely problematic enforcement by all nations of the right to have rights, the right of all human beings “to act together concerning things that are of equal concern to each.” Some of these considerations will lead beyond Origins to several parts of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, and to one passage from The Human Condition, but the primary focus of this paper will remain on the earlier work. I: The Inversion of Politics The scope of Arendt’s conceptual objectives, in Origins and related works from the same period generally, may be summarized as follows. First, as she insists again and again, totalitarianism made clear once and for all the uselessness of causality as a category of historical thought, as it also exploded our standards of political judgment insofar as they are grounded in traditional moral and legal principles. Thus for her the difficulty of understanding totalitarianism conceptually was from the beginning inherent in totalitarian phenomena. Second, the conceptual background of her thought is the different kinds of government as first formulated by Plato and, after many centuries, Montesquieu ’s addition to that formulation of each kind of government ’s principle of action, along with the human experiences in which those principles are embedded. Third, Arendt makes three related distinctions: between governments of law and arbitrary 622 SOCIAL RESEARCH power; between the traditional notion of humanly established laws and the new totalitarian conception of suprahuman laws governing the evolution of nature and directing the course of history; and between traditional political authority that gives stability to legal institutions, thereby both allowing and limiting human action, and totalitarian laws of motion whose function is, on the contrary, to so stabilize human beings that the predetermined course of nature and history can run freely through them. Fourth, Arendt focuses on how totalitarianism transforms ideological systems of belief into deductive principles of action. Fifth, she distinguishes the terrifying human experience of abject loneliness, on which totalitarian rule depends, from that of impotence under tyranny, and differentiates it from the experiences of...

- Anatomy during the third reich - The institute of anatomy at the university of Marburg, as an example

A complete documentation of German anatomical science and its representatives during the period of national socialism has not been published as yet — contrary to the situation in other medical disciplines. Instead of German anatomists, American anatomists have occasionally addressed this issue during their meetings and have reported on special aspects, such as the use of Nazi symbols in anatomical textbooks and atlases (Pernkopf 1952) and the use of corpses of justice victims for anatomical research and student education. Also, the genesis of the atrocious collection of “racial” skulls, initiated along with the SS-institution of the “Ahnenerbe” by the anatomist August Hirt of Strasbourg (who ordered more than 90 inmates from concentration camps to be murdered in the gas chamber built in the concentration camp of Natzweiler-Struthof close to Strasbourg, Alsace) has been described by Frederic Kasten and others. A broader view of the patterns of behaviour and political actions and fates of contemporary scientists, ranging from dismissal to clandestine opportunism, affirmative cooperation and fanatic activism can be obtained by the analysis of the activities in research, medical education and academic positions of the following members of the Institute of Anatomy at the Philipp-University in Marburg: Ernst Göppert, Eduard Jacobshagen, Ernst-Theodor Nauck, Adolf Dabelow, Helmut Becher and Alfred Benninghoff, whose activities and fates differ in several respects and allow more general deductions. Also, the individual fates of a number of prosecuted Jewish anatomists (Wassermann, München; Poll, Hamburg), of devoted and active members of the Nazi party (Clara, Leipzig; Blotevogel, Breslau) and of criminal fanatics (Hirt, Strasbourg; Kremer, Münster) are briefly discussed. The present contribution is an attempt to initiate a more detailed study of all German departments of anatomy during the Hitler regime and to generate a public discussion among the younger generation of German anatomists.

The Holocaust: remembrance and education

The war-generation dealt with the Holocaust as a part of the spectrum of crimes inflicted by the Hitler regime on humanity. The postwar generation, which bore no responsibility, even as neutral witnesses or accomplices, saw it as a special monstrosity; Auschwitz has been integrated into their cultural heritage. In education this means that an obligation of remembrance can provoke reactions of boredom, irritation or worse, since youth is confronted daily with other problems. But remembrance should not be marginal in school history.

Cape Verdean Transnationalism, Old and New

IntroductionThe question of transnationalism's historical depth brigns to mind Stephan Zweig's memoir, Le Monde d'hier. The bitter experience of being forced to flee Hitler's regime and become a stateless person from an enemy nation in England inspired Austrian Jewish man of letters (1881-1942) to reminisce of a time before World War I when the world belonged to all men, where each went when and where he plased, where author himself had ventured as far afield as India and Americas without a passport. Only after Great War, he says, were travellers subjected to the humiliations once inflicted only on criminals--photographs, fingerprints, health certificates, financial guarantees and so on (Zweig, 1993: 476-477). Zweig speaks from vantage point of one who grew up in secure, ordered world of Vienna's bourgeoisie, a far cry from impoverished circumstances of Cape Verdean migrants of nineteenth century. Nonetheless, context he evokes--one that is almost unimaginable for today's migrants and travellers--is one in which Cape Verdean migration to United States came to be and existed for over a century.Transnationalism and have been in forefront of discussions of migration for some years now. Though concepts are of relatively recent vintage, there is good reason to believe that they refer to patterns of considerable time depth. Here I am mostly concerned with first of these concepts; that is, with migrants' life strategies and social relations that bridge several societies. The main issues that concerns us are (1) time depth of transnationalism, and (2) how and why today's transnationalism is different from that of past. I will focus primarily on material from research in Cabo Verde (1972, 1990), as well as more recent field work (1996-99) among Cape Verdean-Americans in Boston-Providence area, in Toronto and Paris.(1) The propositions I will argue are as follows: (1) that transnationalism well predates present era; (2) today's Cape Verdean transnationalism is qualitatively different in some important ways from that of earlier periods, and (3) technological factors do not provide sufficient explanation for such differences; rather, we must also explore broader economic and above all, political factors.At same time, I suggest, study of Cape Verdean migration opens some interesting paths of thought regarding (1) relation of transmigrants to nation-state, and (2) extension of transnationalism in time beyond generation of migrants to their descendants, and in space, beyond bipolar home-host society ties. Finally, I hope to contribute to thinking about transnationalism as regards social identities and intergroup relations.A word on conceptsThough researchers often seem to use terms diaspora and transnationalism interchangeably, Clifford's essay on former term highlights distinctive experience of certain peoples' historic experience of exile begotten by mass violence against them, their collective knowledge of what might be called underside of modernity, and their relations of coexistence with other groups in their societies of residence. (See also Hovanessian, 1993; Marienstras, 1975). Others, such as Noninin and Ong give less emphasis to initial founding violence and more to this type of diaspora's results; that is, communities, persons and groups separated by space who nonetheless think of themselves as we, as having a shared condition, one that is continually reconstituted by travel and visits, and bound together by ties of kinship, commerce, sentiment, values etc. (Nonini and Ong, 1997: 18).Discussions of transnationalism are usually centered on migrants' political and economic strategies that maximize their links to several nation-states, usually those of origin and of residence. (e.g., Foner, 1997; Smith, 1993) Typically, transmigrants are presented as migrants who seek to improve their economic conditions by leaving home society, while still keeping some kind of an economic base there. …

Zwischen Metaphysik und Politik: Thomas Manns Roman Joseph und seine Bruder in seiner Zeit (Studien zur deutschen Literatur; Bd. 147)

Wolters, Dierk Zwischen Metaphysik and Politik: Thomas Manns Roman Joseph and seine Bruder seiner Zeit (Studien zur deutschen Literatur; Bd. 147). Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1998. vi + 331 pp. DM 96.00 paperback. Mann's tetralogy Joseph and seine Brider was written from 1926 to 1942, the most tumultuous period of his life, corresponding with the political unraveling of the Weimar Republic and Hitler's ascent to absolute power. It was during this period that Mann finally spoke out publicly against the Hitler regime and became the leading intellectual representative of German exiles, which burdened him with einer Unmenge politischer Verpflichtungen (1). On the face of it one could interpret the Joseph-novel as a retreat from the times into an refuge, after all, Mann himself set the stage for this with his earlier Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen and his rather late condemnation of Hitler, but this is clearly not Wolters's view. Wolters defends the thesis that the Joseph-novel is Auseinandersetzung mit der Zeitgeschichte, bewuBte Opposition (1). Quite aware of the challenge involved defending his thesis, Wolters acknowledges that the political content of this seemingly novel can only be appreciated when the legacy of Schopenhauer is examined detail, because Schopenhauer was essentially the formative influence on Mann's attitude (3). So, for example, Wolters must argue that despite Schopenhauer's nihilistic, fatalistic disavowal of the ideal of progress, Mann's novel is politically progressive despite its Schopenhauerian basis (4). The practical objective for Mann involved establishing an immanent (diesseitiges) conception of freedom the place of a deterministic and purely metaphysical one (4): All these Fragen schlieBlich munden eine: Frage each der Konzeption des Joseph-Romans, Geschichtsphilosophie, zeitgeschichtliches Engagement and Asthetik umfaBt (5). Wolters approaches Mann as a writer of novels, not as a political writer, but he shows us from the start how nearly impossible it was for Mann to be apolitical or unpolitical by defining the cultural concerns that had motivated Mann's critique of the times. First there was the profanization of the world and the hegemony of the Enlightenment intellect, countered by a radical romantic movement which strived to do away with intellect favor of seeking originary life; a third evil arose when a barbaric anti-intellectualism hijacked metaphysikfreundliche Deutschtum, leaving Mann no choice but to find a way to reconcile Geist and Leben (12). Given this tall order, and thanks to Wolters wellinformed, well-documented and patient analysis of Mann's influences and sources, we come away from this book with a better understanding of why so much of Mann's writing is politically flavored even if he was disinclined to be political. Wolters makes much of the fact that Joseph and seine Brader was written during the most agitated period of Mann's life, yet its political implications have thus far garnered far less attention than Zauberberg and Doktor Faustus (13). Wolters is skilled using Mann's essays and correspondence to amplify his theoretical positions. Novalis figured prominently Mann's attempts to wed democracy and Romanticism, a position which emerges the correspondence with Ernst Bertram and Von deutscher Republik (27). Mann expended great energy on redefining democracy or expanding its definition, based on such unlikely teachers as Novalis, Nietzsche, George, and Bertram (15, 23, 27). In addition to these well-known sources of Mann's inspiration there were numerous others: Dacque, Goldberg, Freud, Scheler, Benn and a host of other German and Russian thinkers whose books prompted Mann to write his Joseph-novel in eine 'wetteiferende' Reihe with theirs (57). Meanwhile, beside the public statements and more privately the real discussion of Mann's own philosophical orientation the new times was taking place the Joseph-novel, for which Mann relied on and distanced himself from contemporaries die sich vor das gleiche Problem wie er gestellt shen (57, 60-61, 69). …

The Phoney Peace. Power and Culture in Central Europe 1945-49 by Robert B. s> Pynsent (review)

REVIEWS I65 translation by Humphrey Tonkin. It provides details of daily life under the Nazis that have not frequentlybeen illuminated, especially the actions of the Arrow Cross; and it details how one family managed to escape deportation and death through both adhering to strict principles and deft improvisation- primarilythrough avoiding capturewith forged documents. It is, at bottom, a record of the impressions and even prejudices of its author: 'The Russians were a generally a good lot [. . .] and there was no reason to fear them, because they were decent guys, even if sometimes they were quick to anger' (p. 20I); the French in Hungary 'were devilishly smart and full of ideas' (p. I72). There are some outright historical errors, such as Soros's statement that Adolf Eichmann 'learned Yiddish and Hebrew' (p. I35) and that the attempted assassinationof Hitler on 20 July I944 'showed that the Germanpeople themselveshad had enough of the Hitler regime'(p. I23). Yet despite its occasional errors of fact, Maskerado is a fascinating glimpse of Hungarian Jewry as it was hunted and trapped by the Nazis and their accomplices. Above all Soros revealsthe bizarreentanglement of Hungarians andJews: A new decree from the Arrow Cross government required spouses of Aryans to move to the ghetto. In Hungary therewas a high level of assimilationand over time this had resultedin a great many mixed marriageswhere one partnerwas Christian and the other a converted or active Jew. The Jewish partner was known in Hungarian as an 'Aryan-spouse'(4ja-pada).Even Mrs Horthy was a descendant of such a Jewish-Gentile marriage, and so was the infamous anti-Semitic politician Bla Imredy. Up to now, members of mixed marriages had been exempted from the anti-Jewishregulations, but this now changed. New tragedies ensued. Sometimes , out of solidaritywith a marriage partner, the Gentile partner moved to the ghetto too, but therewas also a wave of suicides.(pp. I63-64) The Soros family succeeded in 'dancing around death,' but the vast majority of their co-religionists faced extermination. The fact that such a 'dance' was possible, however, makes Hungarian Jewry one of the more intriguing components of East Central European Jewry before the Holocaust. Department ofHebrew andJfewishStudies M. BERKOWITZ University College London Pynsent, Robert B. (ed). ThePhoney Peace.PowerandCulture in Central Europe I945-49. SSEES Occasional Papers, 46. School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, 2000. xiv + 536 pp. Notes. Tables.Appendices .Index.?52.00 (paperback). SINCEI989 withtheopeningof archivesin CentralandEasternEuropethe possibilities forresearch intotheimmediate post-war yearsintheregionhave expanded enormously.Increasinglyhistoriesdominatedby politics and international relationsare beingcomplemented by workthatexaminesthe social dimensionsof war, reconstruction and dictatorshipin the region. Furthermore undertheimpactofthe'newcultural history'andthe'linguistic turn'in historicalwritingthe culturalhistoryof thisperiodhas receiveda good deal of attention. This large and extremely varied book reflects, in its i66 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 own way, the degree to which the studyof the immediatepost-waryearsin the region is changing. The book takesthe form of publishedconferenceproceedings ratherthan a coherent edited collection. Publishedby University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies it is based on a conference held in I998 called 'Another Transition. Politics and Culture in Central Europe, I945-49'. The organizer of the conference and editor of this volume has assembled an impressive and genuinely international team of authors. The voices of young and more established scholars from the region itself can be heard within the essays the books contains, alongside the work of North American and WesternEuropeans. The volume concentratesnot on Central and Eastern Europe, but on 'Central Europe' which is defined essentiallyas consistingof Germany, Polandand the formerterritoriesof Austria-Hungary. This ensuresthat statessuch asAustriaand what laterbecame WestGermany are given consideration, creating opportunities for comparisons to be developed. They are rarelydeveloped within the essaysthemselves,however, as most tend to concentrate on one aspect of an individual country. Furthermore little is done by the editor to tie the essays together in the introduction. This reviewer was left wondering whether the term 'Central Europe' was the best term to describe the region in the period between I945 and I949 given that most of the region was underRed Army occupation, part of the Soviet-sphereof influence and where, by I949, most of the stateswere ruled by dictatorships that sought to transform the...

Adolf Hitler: a biographical companion

This A-Z biographical sourcebook provides information about the life and times of Adolf Hitler, along with insight into the political movement and world conflict he created. The Hitler regime warns us of the destruction that ensues when a perverted ideology and a cult of leadership are combined with a polity where power is divorced from morality. This illustrated A-Z biographical companion provides easily accessible information about the key events in Hitler's life, his most important collaborators and opponents, his domestic and foreign policies, the use of propaganda and the forging of the Hitler cult, racial persecution and the Holocaust, and Hitler as a war leader. Adolf Hitler also includes an introduction, a chronology, maps, primary source documents, a general bibliography, and index. 344 A-Z entries 46 illustrations, chronology, and bibliography

Celluloid Soldiers: The Warner Bros. Campaign against Nazism

During the 1930s many Americans avoided thinking about war erupting in Europe, believing it of little relevance to their own lives. Yet, the Warner Bros. film studio embarked on a virtual crusade to alert Americans to the growing menace of Nazism. Polish-Jewish immigrants Harry and Jack Warner risked both reputation and fortune to inform the American public of the insidious threat Hitler's regime posed throughout the world. Through a score of films produced during the 1930s and early 1940s-including the pivotal Sergeant York-the Warner Bros. studio marshaled its forces to influence the American conscience and push toward intervention in World War II. Celluloid Soldiers offers a compelling historical look at Warner Bros.'s efforts as the only major studio to promote anti-Nazi activity before the outbreak of the Second World War.

"There are Times When Silence is a Sin": The Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Nazi Boycott Movement

From 1933 to 1941 the American Jewish Congress helped lead a consumer boycott of German-made goods in the United States in an effort to undermine the Hitler regime and alleviate the crisis of German Jews. While failing to bring an end to Hitler's antisemitic campaign, the anti-Nazi boycott movement—and the Congress's participation therein— is still regarded as one of the most significant examples of American Jewish mobilization on behalf of European Jewry. Scholarly accounts of the boycott effort, most notably Morris Frommer's American Jewish Congress: A History, 1914-1950 and Moshe Gottlieb's Ameri can Anti-Nazi Resistance, 1933-1941, illuminate the central role of the American Jewish Congress in organizing the boycott effort as well as the tensions within and between American Jewish organizations that inhib ited a united protest front.1 These assessments, though, have neglected one of the boycott movement's essential features: from 1934 to 1941 the Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress assumed a pivotal role in the day-to day operation and local supervision of boycott work. Reflecting a gendered distribution of activist labor, division members took on the jobs of neighborhood organization, consumer mobilization, and storefront picketing. Their work was critical to the functioning of the protest effort through the early years of World War II and thus vital to understanding the complex dynamics and mechanics of the boycott movement. Historians' neglect of the Women's Division part in boycott work is not anomalous. The historiography of American Jewry and the Holo caust speaks little of Jewish women. Landmark studies of American Jewish mobilization during World War II focus primarily on the leadership of major American Jewish defense organizations, such as the

Inventing the criminal: a history of German criminology, 1880-1945

There has been a resurgence of biological research into the causes of crime, but the origins of this kind of research date back to the late 19th century. In this discussion, Richard F. Wetzell presents a history of German criminology from Imperial Germany through the Weimar Republic to the end of the Third Reich, a period that provided a unique test case for the perils associated with biological explanations of crime. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources from criminological, legal and psychiatric literature, Wetzell shows that German biomedical research on crime predominated over sociological research and thus contributed to the rise of the eugenics movement and the eventual targeting of criminals for eugenic measures by the Nazi regime. However, he also demonstrates that the development of German criminology was characterized by a constant tension between the criminologists' hereditarial biases and an increasing methodological sophistication that prevented many of them from endorsing the crude genetic determinism and racism that characterized so much of Hitler's regime. As a result, proposals for the sterilization of criminals remained highly controversial during the Nazi years, suggesting that Nazi biological politics left more room for contention than has often been assumed.