Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei Research Articles

Walter Eichler and his role in the development of electroneurography

ABSTRACT Walter Eichler (1904–1942) performed the first in situ nerve conduction studies in humans. Eichler’s work has been largely overlooked and there have been no biographical accounts written of him. His 1937 paper, Über die Ableitung der Aktionspotentiale vom menschlichen Nerven in situ (On the recording of the action potentials from human nerves in situ) was translated and reviewed. Archival material was obtained on his career that was housed predominantly at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. He had memberships in Nazi organizations but did not appear to be politically active. During his brief career, he constructed novel equipment and established seminal principles for performing nerve conductions on humans. The authors repeated his experiment in the ulnar nerve, which duplicated Eichler’s findings. His recordings were quite remarkable given advances in technology. In summary, the Eichler paper is the first study in the development of in situ clinical electroneurography in humans. Many of his procedural observations are still fundamental in the current practice of electroneurography. As best can be determined, his study in humans did not appear ethically compromised. Although Eichler’s personal background remains open to question, his paper is a seminal study in the history and development of clinical electroneurography. Abbreviations: AP: Action potential; C: Capacitor; CNP: Compound nerve potential; DC: Direct current; E1: Preferred term for active electrode; E2: Preferred term for reference electrode; NSDÄB: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche NSD-Ärtzebund (National Socialist German Doctors’ League; NSDAP: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party/ Nazi Party); SS: Schutzstaffel (Protective Echelon or Squad of the Nazi party)

Understanding the Third Reich by Means of the Law: The Decisions of the Supreme Restitution Court for Berlin as Sources on the Holocaust and the Development of Holocaust Interpretations

This article introduces the decisions of the Oberstes Rückerstattungsgericht für Berlin (Supreme Restitution Court for Berlin) as historical sources that contribute to a better understanding of how early interpretations of the Holocaust developed. The Oberstes Rückerstattungsgericht für Berlin was established in 1953 as the final court of appeals for restitution matters in West Berlin. Some of its decisions were published in a collection that would later be used by judges, lawyers and claimants. Legal experts and practitioners who dealt with restitution would also discuss these decisions extensively. As no other means of gathering insight into the Oberstes Rückerstattungsgericht für Berlin's work were available, its publications became the most important communicative channel for actors within the Court's jurisdiction. The decisions contained distinct narratives concerning the Third Reich that stressed the importance of authoritative political structures while also focussing on state agencies and the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei as main actors. The accounts given in the decisions were partly based on analyses of historical records that were performed either by the judges themselves or by historians at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich (Institute for Contemporary History). This article suggests that on a broader societal level, the decisions contributed to the dissemination of state-centred ideas about the Holocaust. At the same time, the text draws attention to their complicated genesis. Situating the emergence of the decisions alongside the concrete implementation of restitution laws, the Cold War in Berlin and Vergangenheitspolitik (politics of the past), I demonstrate that the perpetuation of state-focussed historical concepts, to a large extent, resulted from the judges’ desire to lessen their significant workloads and to work without the interference of political actors.

Genocide(s) in World War II – Towards the Genocide Convention (origins, definition, processing)

The twentieth century began and ended with the execution of genocide. At the same time, it is the century in which large-scale armed conflicts were fought, including the First and Second World Wars. The Second World War was marked, among other things, by genocides committed against peoples that were planned for extermination by Nazi projects. In the first place, it is inevitable to mention the genocide (Holocaust) against the most numerous victims - the Jews. The Holocaust resulted in millions of victims. Mass murders of Jews were carried out, but in the Second World War, about a million people who were members of other nations were also killed. The Nazis carried out the systematic extermination of Jews and other target groups in concentration camps established in Germany, but also in occupied countries. Hundreds of camps were opened throughout the occupied territories of Europe. The target groups scheduled for extermination were collected and transported by trains, most often in transport and livestock wagons, and taken to camps where a certain number were immediately killed, while another number were temporarily left for forced labor. People who were used for forced labor often died of exhaustion, and those who managed to survive the torture were eventually killed. In addition to the closure and liquidation in the camps, individual and mass executions were also carried out in other places. The large number of those killed indicated the need for quick rehabilitation, which resulted in burning the bodies on pyres or burying them in mass graves. The committed genocides encouraged the formation of the United Nations, but also resulted in the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or for short - the Genocide Convention, which was supposed to be a guarantee for „never again“. Sanctions issued in the form of death sentences to the most notorious war criminals for the terrible crimes for which they were found responsible should have been another obstacle to „never again“. However, the participants of our time testify that it was not so. Genocidal projects have revived and genocides have been realized, as is the case with the genocide committed in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the end of the 20th century. In the trial of the most notorious Nazis, known as the Nuremberg Trials, the harshest death sentences were handed down, as well as life and long-term imprisonment. The specificity of the Nuremberg process is that, in addition to proclaiming the principle of personal responsibility, it also represents a condemnation of the committed aggression, but also a political project as manifested by the condemnation of various organizations that were declared responsible for the crimes committed. At the main international military trial that began on October 18, 1945, 24 defendants were prosecuted for individual responsibility, but six criminal war organizations were also prosecuted - the leadership of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party - NSDAP (National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei) headed by was Adolf Hitler - the most responsible criminal for World War II and the execution of the Holocaust), SS (Schutzstaffel - military branch of the NSDAP), SA (Sturmabteilung - Assault Squad of the NSDAP), SD (Sicherheitsdienst - Intelligence Service of the NSDAP), Gestapo (Geheime Staats Polizei - secret state police) and OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht - Supreme Command of the German Army). Certain prosecutions were also carried out in the national courts of the countries that emerged victorious in the Second World War.

Artykuł 19 programu NSDAP i jego literacka inspiracja

On February 24, 1920, Adolf Hitler announced the 25-point program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP). Article 19 of the program proclaimed: “We demand that Roman Law, which serves a materialistic world order, be replaced by a German common law” (German: Wir fordern Ersatz für das der materialistischen Weltordnung dienende römische Recht durch ein deutsches Gemeinrecht). The presence of Roman law on the Nazi agenda aroused surprise from the beginning. The more time passed, the more sophisticated attempts were made to find its cultural-ideological basis. As a result, a complicated ideology was added to it post factum. Meanwhile, it cannot be ruled out that the inspiration for Hitler and his aides was not some great political tracts, but a primitive anti-Semitic lampoon – Judas Schuldbuch: Eine Deutsche Abrechnung. The book, under the pseudonym Wilhelm Meister, was published by a minor financial official named Wilhelm Meister in 1919.

From letters to bombs. Transnational ties of West German right-wing extremists, 1972–1978

ABSTRACT Extremists cooperate internationally to ‘influence and succeed’ or ‘survive and thrive’ [Moghadam, A. (2017). Nexus of Global Jihad: Understanding cooperation among terrorist actors. Columbia University Press (p. 21)]. Yet, the question of how such cooperation materializes and develops has been understudied, especially for right-wing extremism in the post-war era. Therefore, this paper studies a phase of heightened transnational activity of West German right-wing extremists between 1972 and 1978. It zooms in on the Nationalsozialistische Kampfgruppe Großdeutschland and the Gruppe Otte, which were spatially and temporally connected by the American neo-Nazi Gary Lauck, who led the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – Auslandsorganisation. To study and qualify the impact of transnational engagement on the West German extreme right, the paper introduces a new analytical framework that integrates the historical transnational approach with insights from terrorism studies. Pairing known case studies to previously unused primary source material, the paper argues that the transnational connections between the three groups transformed from indirect to direct cooperation, while evolving across ideological, logistical, and operational domains, and resulted in political violence. It concludes that the extremist cooperation marked the professionalization and multi-lateralization of the West German extreme right in the 1970s.

Max Clara and Innsbruck — The origin of a German Nationalist and National Socialist career

This investigation aims to summarize hitherto scattered pieces of evidence of the early biography of Max Clara, especially considering his connections with the Histological Institute of the University of Innsbruck.Max Clara was born in 1899 in South Tyrol, at that time part of the Habsburg Empire. After high school in Bozen and his participation in World War I, Clara studied medicine in Innsbruck, Austria and Leipzig, Germany, graduating from Innsbruck University in 1923.He joined the Corps Gothia, a German Student Corps, at the start of his studies and became socialized as a German nationalist. When the Tyrolean Parliament conducted an illegal referendum in 1921, in which a majority voted for the merger of Tyrol with Germany, the active members of the Gothia spontaneously removed the border barriers between Austria and Bavaria in the municipality of Scharnitz. They brought them to Innsbruck to be deposited in the statehouse. Clara’s participation in this activity is not documented but is very likely. Seventy-four per cent of the members of this corps joined the Nazi party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP), even before the annexation of Austria by National Socialist (NS) Germany in 1938. Clara likely met Maximinian de Crinis, an SS officer and high-ranking member of the NS health administration, through contacts within their respective corps. De Crinis supported Clara decisively in the anatomist’s appointments as chair of anatomy at the University of Leipzig and later at the University of Munich.Initially, Clara began his academic career at the Institute of Histology and Embryology in Innsbruck as (student) demonstrator, and in 1923 as an assistant. In December 1923 Clara had to leave Innsbruck for Blumau, South Tyrol to take over the medical surgery of his father, who had passed away unexpectedly. Back in Italy, he continued his histological research in his spare time and published a large number of scientific papers. His connections with Innsbruck and especially with histologist Jürg Mathis never ceased.

Brasilien. Ein Land der Zukunft: dois autores, duas monografias, duas Weltanschauungen

Nosso objetivo central é apresentar um estudo sobre Heinrich Schüler, cidadão teutobrasileiro autor de um minucioso livro sobre o Brasil. Com sua ideia de “Brasil, um país do futuro”, antecipou-se a Stefan Zweig em quase três décadas. Brasileiro naturalizado, Schüler foi representante consular do Brasil em Bremen e cônsul-adjunto em Hamburgo, onde também ministrou cursos sobre cultura brasileira para universitários. Baseando-nos em pesquisas feitas em jornais brasileiros e teuto-brasileiros, logramos compor uma imagem de Schüler que, como mostram as análises, transitava facilmente entre as diplomacias brasileira e alemã. Justamente por isso, era bem visto por uns, mas com suspeição por outros. Se, por um lado, mostrava-se um fiel cidadão da pátria que o acolhera, por outro, revelava-se um incansável defensor do alemanismo no Brasil. Defendia o envio de “sangue novo alemão” para terras brasileiras, para evitar que “as colônias de expressão alemã muito dispersas no sul do Brasil” tivessem de se mesclar “com os elementos estrangeiros”. Diante do perfil de Schüler, conclui-se que, se Stefan Zweig tiver lido a monografia do cônsul como leitura preparatória, posteriormente deve ter-se chocado com as ideias políticas desse homem que flertaria com a intenção hitlerista de implantar células do Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP – em português, Partido NacionalSocialista dos Trabalhadores Alemães) em estados germanófonos brasileiros.

Organizing the ‘people’s community’: the NSDAP and the ‘ethnic Germans’ in Nazi-occupied territories

ABSTRACTThis article refers to recent scholarly debates on the term ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft), which throughout the Third Reich remained rather vague and encompassed often contradictory purposes. It deals with the relations between the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) and some of the ‘ethnic German’ (volksdeutsche) organizations to exemplify how German society should be transformed into a ‘people’s community’ after 1933. Thus, it is necessary to analyse the ‘people’s community’ not by asking whether or not its different purposes were realized, but by examining its functions in the Nazi regime. This functional analysis of the ‘people’s community’ focuses on the NSDAP and its relations with ‘ethnic German’ organizations after 1933, primarily in Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War. First, the article describes the NSDAP’s efforts to align the ‘Germans abroad’ (Auslandsdeutsche) after the seizure of power and to organize the German Front (Deutsche Front) in the Saar territories in 1934/35—an experience serving as a blueprint for the relations between the NSDAP and ‘ethnic German’ organizations during the Second World War. Second, it evaluates the creation of the Ethnic German Community (Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft) in the General Government and its efforts to organize ‘ethnic Germans’. Third, it interprets the foundation of the German People’s Community (Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft) in Lorraine and its ongoing attempts to establish a racial hierarchy of ‘ethnic Germans’ over the autochthonous French population. Fourth, it looks at the connection between the Germanization of Lower Styria and the launch of the Styrian Homeland Union (Steirischer Heimatbund) as an ‘ethnic German’ movement. The article argues that the NSDAP’s operational routines regarding both the German population and the ‘ethnic Germans’ living in the occupied territories shaped the ‘people’s community’.

The Clara cell: a "Third Reich eponym"?

German anatomist Max Clara (1899-1966) described the "Clara cell" of the bronchiolar epithelium in 1937. The present article investigates Clara's relationship with National Socialism, as well as his use of tissue from executed prisoners for research purposes, details about both of which are largely unknown to date. Our methodology for the present study focussed on analysis of material from historical archives and the publications of Clara and his co-workers. Clara was appointed as Chair of Anatomy at Leipzig University (Leipzig, Germany) in 1935. He owed his career, at least in part, to Nazi support. He was an active member of the Nazi party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)) and engaged in university politics; this included making anti-Semitic statements about other academics in appointment procedures. Nevertheless, he also supported prosecuted colleagues. Much of Clara's histological research in Leipzig, including his original description of the bronchial epithelium, was based on tissue taken from prisoners executed in nearby Dresden (Germany). Max Clara was an active and outspoken Nazi and his histological research exploited the rising number of executions during the Nazi period. Clara's discovery is thus linked to the Nazi system. The facts given in the present paper invite discussion about the eponym's neglected history and its continued and problematic use in medical terminology.

The National Socialist Sisterhood: an instrument of National Socialist health policy

When Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) came to power in 1933, the new Nazi government focused the German health system on their priorities such as the creation of a racially homogeneous society and the preparation of war. One of the measures to bring nursing under their control was the foundation of a new sisterhood. In 1934, Erich Hilgenfeldt (1897-1945), the ambitious head of the National Socialist People's Welfare Association (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt), founded the National Socialist (NS) Sisterhood (Nationalsozialistische Schwesternschaft) to create an elite group that would work for the goals of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP). Hilgenfeldt proclaimed community nursing as a priority for NS Sisterhood nurses. Catholic and Protestant sisters, who were traditionally dedicated to community nursing, were to be gradually replaced. However, other competing priorities, such as hospital service for the training of junior nurses and work in conquered regions, as well as the lack of NS nursing personnel, hampered the expansion of community nursing. The paper also addresses areas for future research: everyday activities of NS nurses, the service of NS Sisterhood nurses for NSDAP organisations such as the elite racist paramilitary force SS (Schutzstaffel, Protective Squadron), and involvement in their crimes have hardly been investigated as yet.

THE BERLIN NEWSPAPER DER PANZERBÄR, APRIL 1945

The Berlin newspaper Der Panzerbär, which functioned briefly in April 1945, is of historical interest to the study of propaganda, and that of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) in particular. The newspaper's contents reveal the NSDAP propaganda machine functioning in circumstances of immediate violence and utter irrationality. The involvement of NSDAP propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in the newspaper is documented, although it appears to have been peripheral. Its contents, which are consistent with what has been written about Goebbels’ late-war approaches, reveal the last stand of NSDAP propaganda mythology, as well as efforts to link the NSDAP cause to that of European civilization – all underscored by threats from both internal and external sources.

The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945 (review)

Reviewed by: The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 Oleg Budnitskii Michael Kellogg , The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945. 327 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0521845122. $80.00; eBook $64.00. Michael Kellogg's book examines the contribution of Russian émigrés to the formation of Nazi ideology as well as the cooperation of far-right Russian émigrés in Germany with the Nazis. The author pays special attention to the Russian–German society Aufbau (Reconstruction), with which Adolf Hitler collaborated between 1920 and 1923. Chapter 4 is dedicated to Aufbau (109–35), but other parts of the book also touch on the subject. Among the leading figures of Aufbau were the Baltic German émigrés Max Scheubner-Richter, Arno Schickedanz, Alfred Rosenberg, and Otto von Kursell; the Russian émigrés General Vladimir Viktorovich Biskupskii, Fedor Viktorovich Vinberg, Petr Nikolaevich Shabel´skii-Bork, and Sergei Vladimirovich Taboritskii; and the "Ukrainian Cossack" Ivan Poltavets-Ostranitsa. The distinct contribution of Russian émigrés to the formation of the Nazi ideology has been noted before by investigators. Usually mentioned have been German familiarity with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the conception of Bolshevism as the brainchild of Jewry (7–9).1 Unlike his predecessors, Kellogg goes much further, writing of the "Russian roots of Nazism" and stressing that early National Socialism was based on a synthesis of German and Russian right-radical tendencies and ideologies. Kellogg draws a parallel between the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who argued that Germans should resist Jewish materialism, and the predictions of the Russian mystical writer Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii and the philosopher Vladimir Sergeevich [End Page 190] Solov´ev, who foresaw a battle between Russia and world Jewry, with Russia embodying Christ and Jewry the Antichrist (11–12). Based on new archival materials and periodicals from 1919–23 that are now bibliographic rarities, Kellogg's book is the most detailed investigation of the phenomenon of cooperation between German and Russian rightists during the troubled period following the Great War. In Kellogg's estimation it was precisely the influence of Aufbau that to a considerable degree defined the antisemitism and anti-Bolshevism of Hitler, which in turn led to the risky invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and facilitated the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." Even the fateful decision to direct a significant portion of German forces for the occupation of Ukraine instead of concentrating on the advance on Moscow in the summer and fall of 1941 was, in the author's opinion, a reflection of the influence of the ideas of Aufbau (16–17, 261–62). Kellogg came to these conclusions based on his study of materials at the Center for the Preservation of Historical Documentary Collections in Moscow (Tsentr khraneniia istoriko-dokumental´nykh kollektsii [TsKhIDK], now part of the Russian State Military Archive), for many years closed to researchers. Kellogg investigated materials of the Secret Intelligence Office of the Weimar Republic, the Gestapo, and French and Polish intelligence (10–11). Several personal collections were deposited in the former TsKhIDK, among them the diary of Walter Nikolai, chief of German intelligence during World War I, who worked thereafter with Aufbau and the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP); and the fond of the well-known völkish publicist Ludwig Mueller von Hausen. It was precisely to the latter that Shabel´skii-Bork gave a copy of the Protocols with his own commentaries, introducing the text into German antisemitic discourse (11). Kellogg also employed materials of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (the former Central Party Archive of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU] Central Committee), and several German archives. Rosenberg's views, as Kellogg puts it, formed under the simultaneous influence of Germanic mythology (the works of Schopenhauer and Chamberlain, whom he read enthusiastically in his youth) and of Russian literature, in particular Dostoevskii. Here he has in mind, of course, the latter's antisemitic "publicistic" works. "Later on," the author concludes, "Rosenberg helped in the formation...

Visions of the Volk : German Women and the Far Right from Kaiserreich to Third Reich

Visions of the Volk:German Women and the Far Right from Kaiserreich to Third Reich Elizabeth Harvey (bio) An examination of German women's relationship to far-Right politics in early twentieth-century Germany quickly uncovers paradoxes. Conservative, (usually) Protestant women built powerful associations which gave a public voice to women, but they also mounted platforms to proclaim that women's highest duty to the nation lay ultimately through their labors within the home. Claiming to eschew any agenda of women's rights, conservative women fought their way into the most fiercely antifeminist of political milieus, arguing for their inclusion on the basis of their selfless feminine devotion to the higher cause of the nation. Meanwhile, deeply reactionary and instinctively antifeminist men came to accept women as allies in defending their vision of the nation against its foes. Such seeming contradictions invite a closer investigation of what drew women to radical political ideologies and movements that were chauvinistically nationalist, anti-democratic, anti-socialist, and typically antifeminist; what visions of gender and politics emerged from women's involvement with the far Right; and what impact women had within the far Right in a period of mass politics, war, revolution, and counter-revolutionary backlash. The history of German women and the far Right has tended to be dominated by questions about the place of women within National Socialist ideology, and about the extent and nature of women's support for National Socialism before and after 1933. Pioneering studies of women and Nazism appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, exploring the aims and impact of Nazi policy and asking whether women had been peculiarly resistant, or peculiarly susceptible, to Nazism.1 Debates arose, among other things, about bourgeois feminists in face of Nazism and the reasons why German feminists did not resist more effectively the onslaught of Nazism upon democracy and women's rights.2 Other debates on the impact of Nazi policies after 1933 raised the question whether women should be seen more as the victims of a viciously sexist regime, or as collaborators in the creation and stabilization of the Nazi state, actively involved or at least complicit in the regime's crimes.3 While these debates have moved on and become less polarized, important tasks still remain for historians in assessing women's compromises and complicity with the Nazi regime, and in exploring the experiences and responses of women who were discriminated against and [End Page 152] persecuted on the basis of their political views, "race," ethnicity, sexuality or "hereditary quality."4 Meanwhile, more recent studies have raised new questions about the broader spectrum of the radical Right before Nazism and women's place within it, seeking to illuminate women's involvement in these far Right groupings and to analyze the gendered discourses of far Right culture. This brief overview will highlight some of the findings from that research on the decades from the turn of the twentieth century to the installation of Nazi rule in 1933. Tracing those changes means recounting a story that leads towards the rise of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party, NSDAP) and Hitler's takeover of power, but the aim here is also to bring into view some of the individuals, networks, and groupings that competed, ultimately unsuccessfully, with the Nazi movement in the final years of the Weimar Republic. The light this research sheds on women in the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People's Party, DNVP) and on other women belonging to a broader far Right milieu provides an important point of comparison with Nazi ideas and practices concerning the vision of a "national community"—and women's role within it. The far Right in early twentieth-century Germany is hard to demarcate precisely: it was made up of parties and groupings that emerged and refashioned themselves in the course of the upheavals of World War I, revolution, the introduction of democracy, and its demise fourteen years later in 1933. Not so much a cohesive movement as a political and to some extent also a social milieu, the far Right in Wilhelmine Germany could be identified as comprising the Deutsch-Konservative Partei (German Conservative Party), which hovered between loyalty to...

The Idea of the "Third Reich" in the German Legal, Philosophical and Political Thinking in the 20th Century

The idea that after the Nazi takeover the German political prpaganda machinestrongly supported the naming of their land the "Third Reich" (Drittes Reich) is a misperception shared by many historians, political scientists as well as lawyers all around the world even today. It is much less know that Hitler himself was never in full support of his expression even proved qiute effective both before and after NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) tekeover.

Mathematical Publishing in the Third Reich: Springer-Verlag and the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung

Stiss. He was known to take interest in DMV affairs and they believed his views coincided with those current at the DMV board, in other words, with their own. Stiss had been a pupil of Ludwig Bieberbach (1886-1982), who in the Third Reich propagated an anti-Semitic, racial theory of Deutsche Mathematik and led a group of National Socialist mathematicians strongly opposed to the DMV. The DMV board hoped that Stiss might be able to reconcile his former teacher with the DMV, or at least safeguard it and its politics against the threat of political attack from Bieberbach's faction. In addition, Stiss had recently become a member o f the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) and was thought to have good relations to the Ministry of Education and Research, which, accordingly, approved Sfiss's election in October 1937. Stiss grew to be one of the most influential representatives of the German mathematical community in the Third Reich, and collaborated closely with Nazi authorities particularly in the Ministry of Education and Research. In the course of this collaboration the DMV's professional policy became closely entangled with issues that stood at the very core of the Nazi state, notably its anti-Semitism and its antiinternationalism. The Ministry of Education and Research was dedicated to transmitting these values to the sphere of the sciences. The collaboration of the DMV board and especially of Siiss in this program, which in its consequences lay beyond their control, was a precondition of their influence and successful professional policies during the war [10]. During his DMV presidency, which lasted until 1945, Stiss was repeatedly at odds with Springer-Verlag. Springer was amongst the leading scientific publishers in Germany, and their mathematics branch enjoyed a worldwide reputation. After World War I Springer had enrolled outstanding mathematicians to launch a first-class publication program in mathematics. Felix Klein, David Hilbert, and Richard Courant stood for the G6ttingen influence in this enterprise. Springer's yellow books were soon known in the most remote places and often alluded to as the yellow plague, which no mathematician could escape. The many instances of conflict between Stiss, as the representative of the DMV, and Ferdinand Springer and his main mathematical adviser Friedrich Karl Schmidt (1901-1977), can serve well to illustrate how the independence of scientific publishing was shaken under National Socialism.

The International Bruckner Society and the N.S.D.A.P.: A Case Study of Robert Haas and the Critical Edition

Linking the International Bruckner Society with the National-Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei (N.S.D.A.P.) suggests at once an array of highly charged issues: the institutionalization of Anton Bruckner, the influence of politics on art, and the tragic course of events that befell the world some sixty years ago as the Nazis assumed power in Germany under Adolf Hitler. The following discourse focuses on how the elements of this particular historical situation merged to shape a perception of Bruckner that even today exerts its influence on how audiences and music professionals understand this composer. It is not my intention to make any claims about Bruckner's political leanings, nor do I want to besmirch existing Bruckner institutions that do so much for current scholarship. I do not even wish to blame the individuals directly involved in this dark chapter of Bruckner reception for their deeds and misdeeds. My assertion is simply that by examining this period we can see how ideological determinants in the political climate of the 1930s mapped themselves onto perceptions of Bruckner's life and character and that this politicized approach ultimately constituted a crucial factor in the editing practice of the critical edition. Thus, our impressions of Bruckner as an individual and even sometimes the scores that are said to represent his musical genius relate almost inevitably to the views that emerged in these tumultuous years of the twentieth century. It is time, as others have said before me, to question the origins and the agenda of these often tacit assumptions.1 This study relies in great part on papers of the Internationale Bruckner Gesellschaft in the holdings of the Music Collection of the Austrian National Library. The materials (cataloged as F60 BRGA) were connected with Leopold Nowak's estate and were made available for study only a few years ago.2 To my knowledge no detailed examination of these folders has yet been completed: the roughly 5,000 pages of materials (letters, protocols, statements, notes, etc.) are alphabetized and ordered chronologically in several series, but there is no cross-index or

The German Teaching Profession and Nazi Party Membership: A Demographic Logit Model

Who were the is one of the central riddles of twentiethcentury social science. So much theoretical and empirical ink has been spilled over The Nazi Question that the conceptual and monographic answers have begun to develop a history of their own. Impatient with the general ideological disputes over fascism or totalitarianism, historical social scientists have restated the problem in more specific terms: Who voted for Hitler and who joined the Nazi party?1 During the last decade, the election analyses of Hamilton, Childers, and Falter have produced challenging insights into the changing nature of the constituency of the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei). But argument over the extent of elite or working-class support has remained inconclusive, since the electoral approach is forced to work with aggregate voting returns and census figures, thereby complicating statements about individual behavior. The quantitative studies of early activists by Merkl and of Nazi party members by Kater, as well as recent work on the Sturmabteilung (SA) or Schutzstaffel (SS) leadership, have also gone considerably beyond the classical lower-middle-class thesis. But since their data base of joiners renders comparisons between Nazis and non-Nazis impossible,

Victors or Victims? Disabled Veterans in the Third Reich

National Socialist propaganda often proclaimed the movement's affinity with veterans of the First World War. The brown armies of the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) and SA (Sturmabteilung) were portrayed as the successors of the field-gray army of the First World War, and the Third Reich was represented as the fulfillment of the legacy of the front soldiers. The fact that Hitler had served at the front was repeatedly stressed by the party's propaganda, as well as by Hitler himself; one of the Fuhrer's most popular roles was that of the humble, anonymous front soldier who would lead Germany to the realization of the goals for which its soldiers had fought and died before being betrayed by the November Criminals.''1 In presenting the Third Reich as the antithesis of the reviled Weimar Republic, Nazi propaganda denigrated the Republic's treatment of veterans, claiming that it had victimized the heroes of the war first by robbing them of victory by stabbing them in the back (Dolchstoss) and then by treating them as second-class citizens. Under the Republic, the Nazis claimed, the veterans of the war had become antiheroes, a process they promised to reverse when they came to power. Like most promises of the National Socialists, those made to veterans were specious. Benefits remained substantially the same as under the Republic; in some cases they were even reduced. Showered with rhetoric, veterans were psy-

The Nazi Party in the Fast East, 1931-45

A common feature of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy was their pursuit of foreign policies along two separate but parallel directions. One side involved the orthodox channels of intergovernmental diplomacy represented by the Foreign Ministries of each country, while the second element centred around the propaganda and subversive work abroad of such unofficial agencies as the Fascist League of North America and groups of Hitler's Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) operating outside Germany.1 If this system was dualistic and confusing in nature, its basic goal was always to increase the influence of fascism or National Socialism around the world and to establish in selected countries the political and economic hegemony of the dictatorships. While the activities of Nazi party organizations in the United States, Latin America, and Southwest Africa have been studied at great length, the penetration of Asia and the Far East by the NSDAP has gone virtually unnoticed.2 Two important aspects of Hitler's policy toward the Far East were his racial ideology and the Nazi party's use of German communities in China, Japan, India, Australia, and the Dutch East Indies as pawns of German policy. According to unofficial estimates at the end of the 1920s, roughly 357,480 Germans and persons of Geman descent (Volksdeutschen) lived in Asia and the Pacific islands. In 1937 Nazi statisticians counted 14,020 German nationals residing in the Far East (Auslandsdeutschen), of which 2,035 (14.51 per cent) were party members.3 Already in 1931 and 1932, long before the German and Japanese

The Development of the National Socialist Party in Thuringia, 1924–1930

The failure of Hitler's 1923 Putsch relegated the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) to the periphery of German politics until the end of the decade, but these years of relative obscurity were nevertheless of crucial importance for the party. The reshaping of the NSDAP which took place during this period enabled Hitler to take advantage of the general crisis of the early thirties in a fashion that would have been impossible earlier, for in the interim a new and far more effective political instrument had been created. In large measure this was the result of little-publicized organizational work and political struggle, much of it at state and local levels.