Nazi Ideology Research Articles

Необходимо ли избавиться от эпонимов врачей-нацистов?

Hippocrates said: «Whoever succeeds in the sciences and lags behind in morality is more harmful than useful». The activities of doctors are a feat, a great sacrifice. This became especially evident now, during a new coronavirus infection, when doctors, saving the lives of others, died in line of duty. However, in the history of medicine there were also monster doctors who committed terrible acts to people. For example, during the World War II, Japanese doctors in Unit 731 became notorious (their names are known in politics, but they did not enter the history of medicine), as well as a Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, nicknamed Angel of Death. There also were doctors who were both scientists and ruthless killers. Among them are the German doctors who, having made a great contribution to medicine, in wartime became adherents of Nazi ideology and made brutal experiments on people (their names are preserved in medicine as eponyms of diseases discovered by them). The article outlines the historical facts of wartime medical and scientific activity, as well as our opinion on the still open question: should the diseases bear the eponyms of Nazi doctors, whose names have been preserved in history as «scientists» who lost their human appearance?

«Новий Байройт» – відродження вагнерівського фестивалю: передумови, персоналії

Research objective of this work is to study an element of the creative heritage of Richard Wagner, little studied in post-Soviet musicology, namely the author’s Bayreuth Festival, which was founded in 1876 with the aim of creating conceptual conditions for performing the tetralogy “Ring of the Nibelungen” and became the centre of Wagnerian art. In the twentieth century, it turned up in difficult conditions due to involvement in the political processes took place in Germany and threatened its existence at the end of the war. The focus of this work is to highlight the historical conditions of the Bayreuth Festival since the 1920s and its post-war reconstruction in 1951. The methodology of the work is based on the analysis of the historical context and musical-historical conditions, as well as the use of comparative-descriptive methods in relation to the pre-war and post-war types by the directors of their artistic approaches to the stage embodiment of the musical drama of R. Wagner. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the appeal to an integral aspect of R. Wagner’s work, which is little studied in the Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking musicology. The authors, whose works are devoted to the figure and creativity of R. Wagner, including M. Cherkashina-Gubarenko, A. Babiy, L. Mudretska, A. Naumovа, A. Roshchenko, I. Bogdanovа, M. Zabara etc., cover mainly musical problems, bypassing the important element from the point of view of the composer, – the appropriate conditions for the embodiment of his works, which was created in the Festspielhaus of the city of Bayreuth. The only work on the history of the Festival of the times of R. Wagner and K. Wagner belongs to M. Cherkashina-Gubarenko [1]. Conclusions. The history of the Bayreuth Festival in the twentieth century turned out to be dramatic and closely intertwined with the political processes of Germany. The first half of the century and the artistic activity of the directors of the Festival was focused on following the samples of the first lifetime author’s performances, preserving the tradition. Since the late 1920s, Bayreuth has been drawn into the growing authority of Nazi ideology, and after the death of Siegfried Wagner in 1930 and the sympathies of his wife Winifred for the party leader and the dominant ideology, this process intensifies. Despite this state of affairs, art remained as separated from ideology and politics as possible. The post-war situation threatened the continuation of the Festival, but the appointment of the leaders of Wagner’s grandchildren, untainted in political activity, made it possible to avoid this. The renewed artistic policy of the Festival allowed it to become one of the most innovative centres of opera art.

Preface

Business as usual in the face of more than 257,000 fellow Americans dyingfrom the coronavirus?—the business of editing Delos, a scholarly journal ofliterary translations, somewhat removed from the physical manifestationswhere our sisters and brothers, the first responders in the hospitals nursing homes and schools, are employed. Together, our survival and livelihoods are at risk in the current pandemic.
 There are many historical and literary precedents for what we are goingthrough today, beginning with Boccaccio in the fourteenth century and culminating with Albert Camus’s novel The Plague (La Peste, 1947), which he effectively employed as a symbol of Nazi ideology and occupation of France, and as a warning against mass hysteria for future generations, not merely for students of the political process and future epidemiologists, but for ordinary citizens like us.

Between the Projection of Danger, Objectification, and Exploitation. Medical Examination of Polish Civilian Forced Laborers before their Deportation into the German Reich

Before crossing the German border, Polish civilian forced laborers who had been recruited for work in Nazi Germany had to undergo medical examination and delousing. The German authorities wanted to ensure that they deported only able-bodied persons to Germany who had been examined for being free from infectious diseases and vermin. In this paper, I explore to what extent the medical examinations may be regarded as strategies for the objectification and dehumanization of the forced laborers. Focus is put on the question of how the Nazi authorities defined “work ability” because the medical assessment was decisive for the choice and selection of foreign manpower. As it turns out, the definition of work ability was essentially determined by factors such as the need for manpower, force, and oppression. Thus, I put the medical assessment of the forced laborers’ work ability into the context of Nazi ideology and economic policy.

Thomas Mann’s Moses and Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism in the context of ‘Germany’s suicide’

Written during his American ‘exile’ and depicting an alternative story of the prophet Moses, T. Mann’s little studied novella The Tables of the Law [Das Gesetz] (1943) is compared with S. Freud’s Moses and Monotheism [Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion] (1939), his last work completed before his death. The author traces a number of significant parallels: in particular, Moses’s origins in the highest classes of Egyptian society. Mann sees the figure of Moses in The Tables of the Law as one of the purest and most vivid embodiments of creative principles, going back to his own period of ‘playing Goethe.’ Moses is yet another of his powerful, harmonious and optimistic characters from the 1930s–1940s (Joseph in the four-part novel Joseph and His Brothers [Joseph und seine Brüder] or Goethe in Lotte in Weimar), with roots in the majestic Dutchman Peeperkorn from The Magic Mountain [Der Zauberberg] (1924). Instead of engaging in a direct polemic with corresponding ideological dogmata, the two books written by the giants of Germanspeaking culture in Nazi times reveal a profound examination of not fully recognized and therefore still dangerous sources of Nazi ideology on the mythological level in mankind’s collective unconscious.

In peace and war: birth control and population policies in Norway (1930–1945)

AbstractWhile Norway in the 1930s had relatively liberal policies with regard to access to contraceptives, and an increasing number of legal abortions were carried out, the regime that was installed after occupation in 1940 reined them in, fuelled not only by Nazi ideology but by what new the regime saw as a most threatening population decrease. With reference to population policies in other West-European countries, this article compares Norwegian population policies under occupation with that of the 1930s, discusses if the policy towards all groups were the same, and the extent to which the new policies contributed to increasing birth rates in occupied Norway.

Excluding Agency

Excluding Agency

Laboratorium zagłady – nowa ekspozycja historyczna na terenie obozu zagłady Kulmhof w Chełmnie nad Nerem

Kulmhof w Chełmnie nad Nerem to pierwszy i najdłużej działający nazistowski ośrodek zagłady w okupowanej Europie. Stał się miejscem eksterminacji Żydów z ziem wcielonych do Rzeszy, w tym z getta łódzkiego, a także z innych krajów Europy. Mimo to obóz ten pozostawał długo zapomniany. Dopiero w grudniu 2019 r. na terenie właściwego miejsca zagłady w Chełmnie nad Nerem otwarto nową, stałą ekspozycję historyczną. Uporządkowano i oznakowano też teren obozu. Prowadzone przez ostatnie dziesięciolecia zarówno w Chełmnie, jak i w pobliskim Lesie Rzuchowskim prace wykopaliskowe pozwoliły lepiej odtworzyć topografię zbrodni oraz wydobyły na światło dzienne wiele cennych pamiątek po zamordowanych. Mimo, a może właśnie dzięki skromnej formie upamiętnienia uwydatniono specyficzny charakter tego miejsca. To nie obóz koncentracyjny typu Dachau czy Buchenwald, których architektura stanowiła butny wyraz nazistowskiej ideologii, to nie „fabryka śmierci”, miejsce przemysłowego mordu jak Auschwitz-Birkenau, ale wiejski folwark przekształcony pośpiesznie w ośrodek masowej i natychmiastowej eksterminacji

Portrayal of the Germani in Latin Textbooks in Germany, 1945\u20131989

This article is a contribution to the history of classical education, focused on the reception of Roman texts about Germania in German schools between 1945 and 1989. The period under discussion here represents a time during which there was an aversion to handling material tainted by its appropriation under Nazi ideology, and traces the development of new approaches to its treatment.

The Steppes, Anatolia, India? Migration, Archaeology, Genomes, and Indo-European

Around 1000 BC, Indo-European languages were distributed over a wide area, from Xinjiang and India to Ireland and Anatolia (Map 1). Historical-comparative linguists generally assume that the original homeland of the languages must have been smaller and that the later distribution must have resulted from migrations. Early hypotheses, placing the original home in Southwest, South or Central Asia, were based on Bible-based historical perspectives that place the post-deluge cradle near the Iranian high plateau, or on preconceived notions such as the idea that Sanskrit was the ancestor of other Indo-European languages. From the mid 19th century, racial considerations led to a shift farther west, which culminated in the ’Nordic’ homeland proposed by people like Penka, Kossinna and Childe. The association of the Nordic homeland hypothesis with Nazi ideology was a factor in anthropologists’ questioning migration accounts in general, and some archaeologists have proposed that languages can spread through stimulus diffusion, just like various artifacts. Historical comparative linguists and archaeologists with linguistic training, by contrast, have continued to their quest for determining the Indo-European homeland. At present, two major theories compete with each other: The Eurasian Steppe hypothesis and the Anatolian hypothesis. Neither of these hypotheses, however, is acceptable to Indian/Hindu nationalists, who argue for a homeland in India (modern South Asia).

The ghosts in the archive: World War Two photography and landscapes crafted by the Nazis in Finland

ABSTRACT The Finnish wartime landscape was altered by Nazi troops who were stationed there during World War Two. This paper examines wartime sceneries through Finnish Army Information Company’s photographs from the period of the war known in Finland as the Continuation War (1941–1944). The images reveal a completely different side to the Nazi co-belligerence to what is traditionally acknowledged in Finland. I discuss the ways the Nazi troops altered the Finnish landscape, adding `German-ness´ to their surroundings and more specifically, how Nazi ideology manifested in the northern Finnish landscapes. The Finns have been completely oblivious to the symbolic messages the Nazis crafted in their surroundings. Photographs as haunting representation addresses in this paper both the difficult memory of German presence that frames these pictures and the specific potency of these photographic encounters. Haunting as a theory deals with the evocative ways an image can convey information about the past.

Methodological Issues of Cultural Evaluation in the Context of Political Prosumption

The article is devoted to the search for theoretical and methodological foundations of cultural evaluation as a new area of expert activity. There are two new elements in this study. First, while studying online visual images, a number of artistic methods are identified that can be used as criteria in the analysis and evaluation of extremist content materials. Secondly, the analysis is conducted taking into account the characteristics of the digital environment, which ensures the relevance of these criteria to modern social and cultural reality. The article shows that political prosumption creates favourable conditions for the dissemination of conflict-generating and extremist content. It is possible to counteract this destructive tendency by appealing to universally recognized values, such as the victory in the Great Patriotic War in the context of Russian history. This article suggests that civic identity should be used as the foundation of expert analysis, based on a non-alternative recognition of the heroic role of the Soviet people and rejection of Nazism ideology. In the process, the methods of Nazi ideology propaganda are revealed via examples centering on the destruction of the foundations of civic identity.
 Keywords: cultural evaluation, digital space, political prosumption, identity, value system, Nazi symbols, propaganda

PLACES OF MEMORY, HISTORIC PRESERVATION, AND PLACE ATTACHMENT IN NAZI GERMANY

abstract The Nazi Party launched a series of ambitious building programs soon after seizing power intended to achieve a comprehensive spatial reorganization of Germany. As part of these expansive building programs, the regime invested considerable time, effort, and resources in creating an archipelago of places of memory substantiating Nazi ideology and power. This commemorative topography stitched together a profusion of places and spaces into a totalitarian liturgy that glorified notions of struggle and sacrifice on behalf of Hitler and his movement. This article investigates how this topography of Nazi memory worked to translate intangible ideologies into tangible places and experiences, and in doing so, highlights the mutable and multifaceted relationships between places of memory, historic preservation, and place attachment.

The Dispute Over the Reform Pedagogue Peter Petersen (1884-1952) in Jena 2010: Review of a "Total Disaster" After Ten Years

With the reunification of Germany, a Jenaplan School was founded in 1991 in the city of Jena,Thuringia. Since then one place of the city carried Petersen's name. The University School at Jena, refounded by Petersen as Life Community School in 1924 (the traditional purpose as a mere teacher training school goes back to the year 1844) and received international attention during the Weimar Republic. Petersen's attempt to gain recognition in the Hitler state (1933-1945) with his reform pedagogy failed, but the University School was allowed to continue to exist. In 1950 it was closed by the socialist GDR state (East Germany). Ten years ago, a bitter dispute raged in Jena over Petersen because previously unknown racist texts written by him had been discovered. The dispute ended when Petersenplatz was renamed "Jenaplan". A book by Hein Retter, which appeared ten years ago, was highly controversial: it described children of Jewish and socialist origin as well as disabled children - from families who were threatened by Nazi ideology but who saw their children safe with Petersen. Looking back ten years, the author of the controversial book describes the Jena Petersen dispute and what can be learned from it.

Używanie symboli ideologii nazistowskiej w orzecznictwie Europejskiego Trybunału Praw Człowieka. Uwagi na podstawie spraw Nix v. Niemcy oraz Šimunić v. Chorwacja

Celem artykułu jest zagadnienie używania symboli ideologii nazistowskiej w orzecz-nictwie Europejskiego Trybunału Praw Człowieka. Współcześnie w niektórych państwach eu-ropejskich zabrania się bowiem w sferze publicznej symbolicznego posługiwania się symboliką systemów totalitarnych — czy to nazistowskiej swastyki, komunistycznego młota i sierpa, czy też jakiegokolwiek innego symbolu. Na tym tle pojawia się pytanie, jakie są granice ingerencji w wolność słowa. W sprawie Nix v. Niemcy Europejski Trybunał Praw Człowieka stwierdza, że kryminalizacja używania symboli nazistowskich ma na celu zapobieżenie odrodzeniu się nazizmu i utrzymanie pokoju politycznego. Podstawową kwestią było jednak ustalenie, czy zakaz posłu-giwania się symbolami ideologii nazistowskiej w przestrzeni publicznej może być uznany jako ingerencja „niezbędna w demokratycznym społeczeństwie” w wolność wyrażania opinii. ETPCz uznał, że wskazana przesłanka została zrealizowana. Czyniąc rozważania w tym zakresie, słusznie przyjął, że „państwa, które doświadczyły okrucieństw nazizmu, mogą zostać uznane za »państwa, na których spoczywa szczególna odpowiedzialność moralna, by zdystansować się od masowych potworności popełnionych przez nazistów«”. ETPCz dodał, że nie tylko propagowanie nazizmu winno być karalne, lecz także posługiwanie się symboliką nazistowską w celu przyciągnięcia uwagi czytelnika. Ma to bowiem uniemożliwić przyzwyczajenie ludzi do symboli ideologii nazistowskiej bądź dopuszczania do ich tolerowania, zwłaszcza w państwie tak historycznie doświadczonym przez nazizm jak Niemcy. Niewątpliwe sprawa Nix v. Niemcy ilustruje strukturalną analizę propor-cjonalności w odniesieniu do wolności słowa. W artykule poddano analizie także sprawę Šimunić v. Chorwacji, która dotyczyła piłkarza ukaranego przez władze chorwackie za to, że w trakcie meczu zwrócił się do tłumu z pozdrowie-niem symbolizującym nienawiść w stosunku do ludzi różnych wyznań lub tożsamości etnicznych, co było manifestacją ideologii rasistowskiej. Wykorzystał on oficjalne powitanie organizacji Usta-sza obowiązującego w czasach reżimu Niezależnego Państwa Chorwackiego. Trybunał wskazał, że skarżący użył wskazanego gestu w czasie meczu piłkarskiego wobec ogromnej widowni, na które to okrzyki widzowie odpowiedzieli, co więcej, zrobił to cztery razy. W sprawie Šimunić v. Chorwacja Trybunał powtórzył, że charakter i surowość nałożonej kary są czynnikami, które należy wziąć pod uwagę przy ocenie proporcjonalności ingerencji w wolność słowa. W artykule znalazła się analiza orzecznictwa ETPCz oraz wynikające z niej wnioski.

Nazi Ideology and Propaganda in the Pages of the Mitteilungsblatt of the Dienststelle Rosenberg during the Second World War

Nazi Ideology and Propaganda in the Pages of the Mitteilungsblatt of the Dienststelle Rosenberg during the Second World War

The 1963 Krasnodar Trial

In the city of Krasnodar, capital of the Russian Kuban´, a very special public trial took place from 10 to 24 October 1963. Its nine defendants embodied the darkest aspects of the Second World War in the USSR. Former auxiliary members and officers of Sonderkommando 10-a, they had taken part in the extreme violence committed by this subunit of Einsatzgruppe D, a paramilitary group in charge of the “cleansing” of southern Ukraine and Russia in the wake of the Wehrmacht. The echo given to this trial clearly distinguishes it from the dozens of other trials held throughout the Soviet Union after the 1955 partial amnesty of collaborators, and from trials in the south of the RSFSR more specifically. Numerous articles in the local and central press, a radio broadcast, a documentary film (In the Name of the Living), a best-selling book (The Abyss), and an aborted fiction film project added layers of stories, sounds and images to the story of these nine men, their victims, and the investigators who brought them to justice. The variations in the way the story is told in these various media constitute one of the common threads of the article, which also looks at how these works helped prolong the echo of the Krasnodar trial. The example of the media coverage of the Krasnodar trial goes against several preconceived ideas about the relationship between arts professionals and the police and judiciary. It confirms that artists sometimes enjoyed a margin of freedom during the Thaw and some time beyond. It illustrates various ways of filming a trial (1963 and 1965) and more still the wide array of renditions of court proceedings, from a live broadcast in the urban space to an engagé author’s highly literary short story. This case also shows how the same artist conveyed his vision of the trial depending on whether he was acting as a journalist, a screenwriter or author. The study confirms the importance of the political resources available to the various actors in this story between 1963 and 1967 with regard to the limits of the speakable and the demonstrable. The crucial role of a very committed artist, Lev Ginzburg, overcame great institutional and ideological resistance until the writer finally paid the price for his commitment. Ginzburg’s extremely daring depiction of wartime collaboration and – quite atypically – of Nazi ideology and the Holocaust makes his works singular, privileged though he was in literary circles. Last, it should be stressed that the intensity of the media coverage of this trial, Ginzburg’s particular role in German-Soviet relations, and the confidential steps taken in parallel by the Prosecutor-General of the USSR undoubtedly contributed to the (re)opening in the West of investigations of Germans involved in the crimes of Sonderkommando 10a and to their trial in West Germany between 1972 and 1980.

The Indoctrination of the Wehrmacht: Nazi Ideology and the War Crimes of the German Military Bryce Sait

The Indoctrination of the Wehrmacht: Nazi Ideology and the War Crimes of the German Military Bryce Sait

Rolf Hassler: from leucotomy to stereotaxy

Rolf Hassler is one of the most renowned German specialists in psychiatry, neurology and neuroanatomy. Hassler's career exemplifies medicine as scientific endeavor. Relaying on an expertise in neuroanatomy gained at Oscar and Cecile Vogt's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, especially regarding the structure of the thalamus, Hassler enabled Freiburg University's neurosurgery clinic the invention of stereotactic "stepped leucotomy" and established thalamotomy internationally in a leading way. While directing the Neuroanatomical/Neurobiological department of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research from 1959 until 1982, Hassler continued to study the effects of stimulation and targeted subcortical electrocoagulation in the cat brain. The Freiburg trained neurosurgeon Gert Dieckmann helped Hassler to apply the newly gained knowledge for the stereotactic therapy of torticollis, tics and obsessions and compulsions. The use however of thalamotomy also as a surgical therapy for aggressiveness in children, mainly during the late 1960s and early 1970s, is starting to provoke public criticism. Contrary however to the accusation of a medicine shaped by Nazi ideology into a "science without humanity", Hasslers career reveals a problematic intrinsic to medicine: the together of "art of healing and science".

Features of school education in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the District of Galicia (1941–1944)

ABSTRACT For Ukraine, the beginning of Nazi occupation meant a change from one totalitarian regime to another. In Soviet times and during occupation alike, all spheres of public life, including the education system, were permeated with politics and ideology. There could be no talk about democratic principles in education. Schools were supposed to raise the new generation in the “right” direction for the authorities. Based on a review of Ukrainian and former Soviet literature as well as on archival research, this contribution makes the history of schooling in WWII-Ukraine accessible to international scholarship. Thereby, it yields new insights into the impact and limitations of Nazi educational reforms in occupied territories. During the Nazi occupation, Ukraine was divided into several occupation zones. Focusing on the zone with the most severe regime – Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU) – and the one with the softest one – the District of Galicia (DG) – the study shows it was mainly the occupying powers that shaped the educational processes in both zones in question. However, the role of local actors – Ukrainian intellectuals, former teachers, Soviet partisans, and members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) – was also notable. Their interests were different and sometimes mutually contradictory. Members of local communities tried to help schoolchildren get at least some education, whereas the OUN tried to achieve their own political goals: i.e. overcome the Soviet tendencies, undercut the influence of Nazi ideology on the educational system, and reform the latter in order to unite the Ukrainian people into a strong national community.