Nazi Germany Research Articles

Between God and Hitler: Military Chaplains in Nazi Germany

Between God and Hitler: Military Chaplains in Nazi Germany

The Man is the Message

The eight-time Academy Award-winning film Gandhi (1982) aims to present the person Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869–1948) as a “spokesman for the conscience of all mankind.” More than forty years later, the film still brings to light significant issues regarding the essence of broad moral and political aspirations, the formation and upholding of “civil religion,” and the potential of non-violent political and social actions to prevail in a troubled world. While primarily focusing on the portrayal of Gandhi, the film contrasts and reflects upon the differences and similarities between the markedly different—yet in crucial ways, alike—depictions of civil religion in the 1935 German Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will. Both films, as argued here, document uncertainty—Gandhi overtly showcasing it as a “soft” film of civil religious enactment, and Triumph covertly displaying it as a “hard” film of civil religious enactment. Whereas Triumph aimed to present a clear vision of a future devoid of doubt, Gandhi raises queries and leaves audiences uncertain about its message, except for the assertion that the man (Mahatma Gandhi) embodies the message itself.

MORAL AND ETHICAL COMPONENT OF SCIENCE IN TIMES OF WAR

MORAL AND ETHICAL COMPONENT OF SCIENCE IN TIMES OF WAR

„Pasauliui reikėjo parodyti“: Lietuvos (antinacinės) rezistencijos politinių kalinių sąjungos veikla

The article focuses on the activities of the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners of the Anti-Nazi Resistance in Germany and the USA, an organisation that has not been studied in the historiography so far. It was founded in 1946 to care for the repressed participants of the anti-Nazi resistance and their families but it went beyond the narrow boundaries of humanitarian aid to its members and became involved in the anti-Soviet struggle of the Lithuanian diaspora. In 1948 and 1952, the word ‘anti-Nazi’ was dropped from its name. The organisation united the Lithuanians repressed by the Nazi and Soviet regimes. The article analyses the circumstances of the founding of the union, its aspirations and achievements, and the reasons for its changing identity.

Վազգեն վարդապետ Պալճյանի (Վազգեն Ա վեհափառի) Ռումինիայի հայ համայնքում հոգևոր գործունեությունը 1943-1954 թթ. / The spiritual activity of father Vazgen Palchyan (Vazgen I Palchyan Catholicos) among Armenian community in 1943-1954 in Romania

The article is dedicated to the history of the entering of spiritual service by one of the prominent armenian catholicos Vazgen I Palchyan, in the diocese of the Armenian apostolic church in Romania. The historical and comparative-analytical methods were used in researching the work. The material of article was composed by combining interdisciplinary information. The mother of the young teacher, Levon-Karapet Palchyan, was initially against the idea of her son becoming a clergyman, but later she gave in, and in 1943 On September 30, Levon-Karapet Palchyan was ordained a priest, being renamed Vazgen.In article it have been touched the visit of Vazgen Palchyan to about a thousand armenian prisoners of war held by fascist Germany in Romania.That visit later became the content of Gulnazaryan's documentary story "Sermon of the father". The article also refers to scientist Asatur Mnatsakanyan's work- "Book written in the claws of barbed wire". With minor exceptions, the author wrote it in a fascist concentration camp. In the camp A. Mnatsakanyan handed over the book to father Vazgen Palchyan. Of course, many years later it was published. The article also refers to the first visit of Vazgen Palchyan to his motherland and a few years later he became a bishop.

THE CONCEPT OF LUSTRAATION AND THE PECULIARITIES OF ITS APPLICATION IN UKRAINE

The article examines the essence of lustration as a political and legal mechanism for the protection of democracy. It was revealed that this phenomenon has been known to world his­tory since ancient times, but it received a modern meaning after the Second World War, when a number of European countries were in a state of overcoming the consequences of anti-dem­ocratic fascist and Nazi regimes. The complex political and legal nature of the concept of «lustration» is revealed, which is manifested in the need to find a balance between the protec­ tion of the principles of young democracy and the protection of human rights. The world ex­perience of conducting lustration and the most frequent mistakes made by states in this aspect are analyzed. International bodies and organizations, such as the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) and the European Court of Human Rights, play an important role in the mechanism of determining the criteria and principles of lustration. It is the established practice of these institutions that allows us to conclude that lustration in itself is not a violation of human rights, but acts as an effective mechanism for cleansing power from representatives of past anti-democratic regimes. Historical experience shows that only those states that passed through lustration and decommunization mechanisms got a chance to build truly democratic right-wing regimes. Ukraine, on the contrary, is a vivid example of a state that did not carry out appropriate proce­dures immediately after the overthrow of the communist regime, therefore, after almost several dozen years, it faced the same problems in a significantly larger volume. Also, the domestic experience of conducting lustration proved how ineffective the relevant mechanisms can be when the legislator does not take into account international standards in this field and the hast­ily adopted legislation contains a number of shortcomings, which include: lack of an individualized approach to responsibility, too wide a list of persons to whom it was distributed Law of Ukraine «On Purification of Power», lack of effective protection mechanisms, etc. As a result, such deficiencies in the legislation led to the recognition of unlawful state interference in the rights of persons to whom lustration was applied and the nullification of relevant efforts.

Nazi ‘black’ Propaganda to Britain: Secret Radio Stations and British Renegades

While many will be familiar with the British traitor William Joyce who, as Lord Haw-Haw, became infamous for his radio broadcasts to Britain on behalf of Nazi Germany during the Second World War, much less widely known and studied is the work of Büro Concordia, an organisation created by Joseph Goebbels to broadcast ‘black’ propaganda from Berlin to Britain. Between 1940 and 1945 five secret radio stations posed as the voice of British dissident, anti-war organisations operating within the United Kingdom, broadcasting a stream of propaganda which aimed to demoralise the British people and undermine its support for the war. While they can be credited with some limited success, they fell far short of what Goebbels had hoped and expected from them. These stations were launched by the Reich Propaganda Ministry, but the two dozen writers and speakers who produced these broadcasts from studios in Berlin were British citizens. This study evaluates these ‘British renegades’ and the system that identified, recruited and trained them, and concludes that whatever potential there might have been to influence the course of the war, the employment of people so wholly unsuited to the work ensured that Concordia was bound to fail from its inception.

Performative Mo(nu)ments

Abstract The forms of popular and mass theater developed in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany reached back to classical antiquity to reinvent theater as a secular rite. At first glance, the use of the theatrical medium is at odds with the classicizing monumentality that characterized the cultural expression of fascist regimes. Theatrical performances are by their very nature ephemeral events; unlike monuments, they do not leave their mark on civic space, and can barely provide a testament to generations to come. Drawing on performance theory and cultural history, the author argues that these antiquity-inspired performances provided powerful sites of re-enacting the myth of national rebirth. Fascist regimes used open-air theaters and forms modelled on Greek theater, whilst also tapping into the notions of performance that had been developed within the traditions of the theatrical vanguard to offer the experience of a reborn past. These performances brought forth grandiose visions of classical antiquity through living bodies and helped to embed the imagined past into a mythicized present. The intertwining between the theatrical medium and classical reception allow us to demonstrate the significance of embodied practices in shaping fascism’s political radicalism.

Editorial Introduction

Abstract This special issue examines the use of classical antiquity within artistic, cultural, and political events under fascist regimes in the interwar period. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany promoted the production of ancient drama, alongside forms of theater modelled on Greek antiquity, organized grand-scale classical spectacles, and deployed ancient themes and classical-looking symbols and insignia at political gatherings and displays. The analyses presented in this special issue bring into dialogue the scholarship on theater and culture under fascist regimes with the growing literature on the reception of the classics to foreground the significance of performative practices in reconfiguring the classicizing mythologies of fascism. It is the hope of the guest editors that the findings presented here will contribute to the study of performances that strove to re-enact historical pasts beyond the scope of classical reception.

Forced Labour of Polish and Soviet Children Under Nazi Occupation Discussion by Prof. Johannes-Dieter Steinert and Prof. Beata Halicka, 1 December 2022

The following conversation is an abridged transcript of a discussion that Prof. Dr. Beata Halicka (UAM) held with Prof. Dr. Johannes-Dieter Steinert of the University of Wolverhampton in the UK. It took place on December 1, 2022 and was the opening event of a conference entitled Little Workers: Child Labor in socio-cultural and economic perspectives throughout history. The conference was organized by the Department of Economic History, the Department of Eastern European History and the Research Unit of Cultural History and was held at the Faculty of History of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Johannes-Dieter Steinert is a prominent specialist in the field of child forced laborers in National Socialist Germany and German occupied Eastern Europe. His books on the subject have been published in English, German and Polish.

Identification of Josef Mengele’s Noma Experiment Victims

Abstract This research note analyzes Josef Mengele’s experiment on sixty-three victims in Auschwitz suffering from noma, a rare and often fatal disease that results in the erosion of oral facial tissue. The author examines Mengele’s noma experiment, the treatments imposed on the victims, and the retention of specimens from the Nazi era. Through a comprehensive chart, the author includes biographical information on all known victims of the experiment.

Jewish Cemetery at Gwarna Street (former Claassenstrasse) in Wrocław: Excavation Report from 2017 and Opportunities for Rescue and Commemoration

Excavations in the area of the former Jewish cemetery in Wrocław at Gwarna Street (formerly Claassenstrasse) have been undertaken many times, most recently in 2017. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the cemetery has been subject to urban encroachment which gradually reduced its historic area, forcing two exhumations, followed by devastation in the 1940s under the Nazi regime. The cemetery was formally liquidated in post-war Poland, in the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, the remaining tombstones were removed and part of the area was built over. In order to develop the areas covered by the earlier exhumations, exploration works were carried out to identify the exact area. In 2017, burials from the cemetery were discovered during construction works. Excavations carried out in 2017 revealed seven individual burials, a mass grave with 115 burials in wooden cases, and 5 mass graves from WWII. Within the cases, fragments of pottery from the 18th and 19th centuries were found. The authors discuss the history of the cemetery, details of the 2017 excavation report with analysis, and current efforts to protect and commemorate the area.

The return of Prometheus. Dominant powers and the management of careful revisionists

AbstractAfter defeating the 20th-century challengers to the international order, the United States must today calibrate its response to the rise of the PRC, whose foreign policy poses problems both for policy-makers and IR scholars. Wilhelmine and Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and USSR have left a heavy mark on the scholarship on revisionist threats and their management. Like the mythological Titans, these states launched their challenge all the way to ‘Olympus’: they longed to build a new international order by war or a large-scale and long-standing competition. However, the myth of Prometheus teaches us that this ‘revolutionary’ path is not the only road for secondary states to gain primacy. Revisionism can also take a more careful shape, both by means and objectives. The article preliminarily discusses the understudied type of careful revisionism and distinguishes the subtypes of ‘incrementals’, ‘moderates’ and ‘gamblers’. These more nuanced forms compel status quo power(s) to face a dilemma between two strategic options: engagement or confrontation. Then it posits that a wisely gauged assessment of the careful revisionist challenge by the dominant power must inevitably lay at the basis of any grand strategy for preserving the status quo and preventing systemic change. Finally, it tests this hypothesis by investigating the confrontation between a dominant power – the United Kingdom – and six careful revisionists – namely the United States (1814–1860), the Kingdom of Sardinia/Italy (1852–1882), France (1875–1904), Russian Empire (1864–1907), Imperial Japan (1919–1936) and Fascist Italy (1922–1935).

Making Holocaust Memory in Finland: The Jewish Community and Conflicting Loyalties, 1944–1950s

Abstract This article analyzes how Finnish Jews defined their position during the Second World War when Finland fought against the Soviet Union as a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany. After the Moscow Armistice in September 1944, the Jewish community’s leadership created an official narrative that transformed the community’s travails into a positive experience. They wanted to signal to the Allied forces and Jewish communities worldwide that their rights had not been violated during the war, even though Finland had been de facto allied with Nazi Germany. By doing so, they suppressed knowledge of the treatment of Jewish refugees and their deportations, as well as of their own volatile positions during the war. By inviting Marshal Mannerheim to the Helsinki synagogue in December 1944, the community helped forge Mannerheim into a national hero by honoring him for saving the Finnish Jewish community from the Holocaust. In addition, this article examines how Finnish Jews commemorated Holocaust victims vis-à-vis the commemoration of fallen Jewish soldiers in the transnational Jewish (survivor) community in the immediate postwar years.

Putin’s Holy War of the Fatherland: Sacred Memory and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

AbstractIn mid‐2020, Patriarch Kirill (Gundiaev) consecrated a new church known as the Main Cathedral of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The cathedral was dedicated to the Soviet Union’s “Great Victory” over Nazi Germany, and its interior was covered with grandiose mosaics depicting Soviet glory on the battlefields of World War II. In this version of the past, however, Soviet soldiers were shown to have supernatural help from Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. This merging of Orthodoxy and Communism shocked many observers, who viewed the two ideologies as bitter enemies, dating back the Russian Civil War. Yet on the walls of the new military shrine, the lions and the lambs had laid down together. Angels shielded Orthodox Whites and atheist Reds alike, and the Virgin gazed down on both tsars and commissars. Two implacable foes, on different sides of the greatest rupture in Russian history, had been sutured together into a single and uncontradictory version of the past. But where had this sacred synthesis come from? Who was responsible for the politics of memory preached on the walls of the Main Cathedral? And what role did these sacred memory politics later play in the Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Antisemitism without Jews: the Impact of Redemptive Antisemitism in Norway before the Nazi Occupation

ABSTRACT In his magnus opus Nazi Germany and the Jews (1997), Saul Friedländer identifies redemptive antisemitism as a model of world explanation, which offers a universal answer to all alleged problems of modern society, such as capitalism, communism, liberalism and cultural, social and biological decline. Its core element is the perception of history and politics as a struggle against the Jews and their alleged world conspiracy. Consequently, Friedländer considers redemptive antisemitism the major ideological precondition for the Holocaust. Apart from the local arrangements of the Norwegian occupation regime (1940–1945), we argue that it was the specifically aggressive form of redemptive antisemitism that provided the ideological basis for the Holocaust. Building on Friedländer’s conceptualization, we define the phenomenon as consisting of three main elements: 1) Dualism and Demonisation, 2) Conspiracism and Intentionalism and 3) Apocalypticism and Palingenesis. By using three Norwegian case studies – articles and books of the radical antisemites Eivind Saxlund, Mikael Sylten and Halldis Neegaard Østbye – we demonstrate how a marginal phenomenon, due to changed circumstances and its transferability, became crucial during the German occupation. Our source material shows the potential for violence and the totality of redemptive antisemitism and underscores the impact of conspiracy beliefs on society.

The Value System of Unevenness

Unevenness has become a moral category. It is something to be protected and preserved. The moral essence of unevenness is the assertion that certain elements of underdevelopment are more valuable than a state of development. However, the masters of semi-detachment have another challenge to meet. Its believers must also separate their societies from each other. Towards their Eastern conquerors they try to present themselves as more Eastern (i.e., more communist more pro-Russian). If the conqueror is Western (e.g., National Socialist Germany) then they endeavor to present themselves as more pro-German than their neighbors, and in joining the democratic West they try to present themselves as more Western, consciously pushing back their neighbors. Moreover, if they approach the East and the West at the same time, they argue both ways simultaneously. This attitude also motivates the specific role of nationalism in our region. In our case, the role of national identity is not only the same as it used to be in the most developed parts of Europe, but here in Central Europe it has also had to justify the unevenness of state and society. Keywords: conception of the state; Central Europe; underdevelopment; state of development; advanced state; moral category; great power

Uniform-undone: A study in the repurposing of military attire through history and in experimental practice

This article reports on a practice-led research project focusing on military attire as both a subject and an agent of change. An historical account situates the origins of modern military attire within the emergent modern state during the nineteenth century, and then examines its subsequent role as part of the project to create a ‘new man’ in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. This is followed by a critical discussion of the decoupling of military attire from its associations with the institutions of state and warfare during the Vietnam War – where fatigues entered the popular atmosphere as casual attire that was variously subversive, countercultural and aesthetic in nature. Employing the MA-1 bomber jacket and camouflage as illustrative examples, the article then highlights the continued repurposing of military attire and its concomitant commoditization. The practice-led research employs object-based research, speculative artistic methodologies and various garment-making techniques in the production of a novel ‘military’ garment that explores the symbolism of military uniforms and critiques their traditional concept as utilitarian combat wear. The material outcomes interrogate linkages between military attire and notions of masculinity, class and gender identity. The research project further attempts to speculate on how military attire may be repurposed within the atmosphere of the twenty-first century – one that contemplates new forms of identity and other challenges that are responsive to contemporary circumstances.

Edward B. Westermann, Drunk on Genocide. Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2021

Edward B. Westermann, Drunk on Genocide. Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2021

BEYOND RELIGION

By equating the traditional mindset with traditional beliefs (in magic, ritual, superstitions, etc.), several studies have consistently shown that such beliefs significantly influence people's political behavior and preferences. While these studies have highlighted the political consequences of a traditional mindset in several countries from the Global South, they nevertheless have little to say as to whether holding superstitious beliefs (e.g., believing in fortune tellers, horoscopes, or lucky charms) has certain political implications for countries in the Global North. In this article, we explore whether the traditional mindset has political consequences even in an industrially advanced Germany. We present an analysis of data from the German General Social Survey (GESIS 2019) showing that superstitious voters have less trust in the political system, are more inclined to think that Hitler would be remembered as a good stateman if he had not perpetrated the Holocaust, that the Nazi regime also had a good side, and that the Jews are different and, in any case, have too much influence. Hence, dissemination of superstitious beliefs could make right‐wing populists more electorally appealing and successful than they once were. We believe our findings to be of some importance as they show that if the proliferation of superstitious beliefs continues unchecked, they may transform our political systems in ways that policy makers and democratic forces should strive to avoid.