Nazi System Research Articles

‘Real National Work’: The Politics of Nazi Race Science in Upper Silesia, 1934–1942

Abstract This article analyses the political and scientific controversy surrounding a race science project undertaken by the anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt under National Socialism. Beginning in 1934, Eickstedt and his team of assistants conducted a series of racial studies on the population of Upper Silesia, a contested borderland in East Prussia. Motivated by a nationalist desire to counter the work of Polish anthropologists in the region, Eickstedt argued that the population of Upper Silesia belonged predominantly to the so-called ‘Nordic race’ and that the territory was thus fundamentally German. Nazi officials, however, viewed the Silesian studies with alarm, since the results also appeared to show that people in the area were a racial mixture and that the ‘Nordic race’ made up less than 40 per cent of the population in some locales. They worried that Eickstedt’s studies could undermine Germany’s territorial claims in the region and threaten national unity. The ensuing controversy presents a case in which the anthropological concept of ‘race’, rather than serving its usual role in Nazi thinking as the biological underpinning of the Volk (or people), threatened to undermine its coherence. The reaction to Eickstedt’s Silesian studies demonstrates a lack of consensus on race within the Nazi system, suggesting that understandings of race in Nazi Germany were neither as coherent nor as uniform as the paradigm of the ‘racial state’ has assumed.

The Nazi Concentrationary Machine. The Human Body between Tearing and Annihilation in La Part du fils by Jean-Luc Coatelem

This article aims to explore the representation of the human body and its metamorphoses during the Second World War. The material on which the present analysis relies is provided by Jean-Luc Coatalem’s novel La part du fils (2019), a narrative approaching and insisting on the idea of the human being as a convict trapped between destruction, body decomposition, and alienation. Committed to his sense of moral and familial duty, the narrator starts his investigation to reconstruct his grandfather’s identity, annihilated in a German concentration camp. His fruitful research delivers material rich in details about the practices of the Nazi system and particularly about the concentration machine. Unjustified arrests, the detention of those considered dangerous to the system, deportation, forced labour, violence, starvation, and sleep deprivation become agents of metamorphosis in the carceral space where most of the captives have been annihilated. Accordingly, our analysis aims, on the one hand, to expose war in its most detailed form and the whole process referring to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labour. On the other hand, the analysis focuses on the functional Nazi mechanism to reveal the human being in the complete process of extinction, specifically through physical destruction, alienation or, more frequently, a fusion of both.

Criminalized Intimacies between POWs and ‘Unworthy War Wives’ and Their Soldier-Husbands’ Responses to Racial, Sexual Wartime Justice in Nazi Germany

The article places itself in the burgeoning literature on fraternization between POWs and local women during the twentieth century world wars. Though fraternization with the enemy was considered undesirable by all warring nations, incarcerating women for prolonged periods and suspending their citizenship for even longer was a hallmark of the Nazi system of (in)justice. War wives came in for harsher treatment as double traitors: to the nation and their soldier-husbands. The author has selected a few love triangles from a large cache of Gestapo reports; regional, local and ‘Special Court’ trials; and soldier-husbands’ clemency appeals for a qualitative analysis. Her interrogation of the archival sources from a people’s perspective goes into hitherto unexplored emotions, subjectivities and experiences of the affected people and deliniates how they appropriated, negotiated, rejected and defied the penal code in their own ways through a display of willful conduct. The interiority of their experience is juxtaposed with the discourse analysis of honor and shame surrounding criminalized intimacies to expose the gap between wartime discourse and social practice.

Builders of the Third Reich: The Organisation Todt and Nazi Forced Labour

The built environment remains a comparatively overlooked aspect within the historiography of the Nazi period, despite its importance to the regime. During the war years, Organisation Todt oversaw a vast network of over a million forced and slave labourers working on infrastructure and engineering projects that stretched across Europe. However, unlike other agencies such as the SS, neither the extent to which Organisation Todt’s activities underpinned the mechanics of the regime’s operation, nor the terrible abuses it perpetrated, were recognized at Nuremberg. Charles Dick’s Builders of the Third Reich seeks to address this. Rather than attempting the daunting task of compiling the definitive organizational account, the text is carefully positioned as a history. Five thematic chapters guide the reader through a considered exploration of how the Organisation functioned within the structure of the regime. The first examines how Organisation Todt was instrumental in realizing Nazism’s imperial goals; the second considers the process of extracting raw materials from occupied countries; the third situates the Organisation within the Nazi system and explores the cooperation and competition with other agencies and state bodies. The fourth section focuses on the experiences of slave and forced labourers across its vast network, and the fifth looks at the motivation of perpetrators.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF A LEADER IN MODERN COUNTRY GOVERNANCE

The article deals with the problems associated with modern approaches to leadership in the highest public authorities. Great historical figures, as well as great public ideas, arise, as a rule, at turning points in world history or the history of a particular nation. Personality is formed in the most complex social processes, in the interweaving of many social factors. The formation of personality is carried out in the process of direct and indirect influence on the individual of the entire system of social institutions. The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists,” said Winston Churchill. One way or another, this phrase turned out to be truly prophetic. After all, Russian “denazifiers” write articles that would make Goebels himself envious, directly admitting to planning a genocide. Unfortunately, it has fallen to our lot to face the worst manifestations of dictator rule in a state neighboring Ukraine. Russia with its sole leadership for 22 years, promotion of the idea of the “Russian world”, constant military conflicts against other states, zombie (without alternatives) of its servile population, strict regulation of society and the economy, and, finally, a bloody war against the “brotherly” people in Ukraine, fully meets the Nazi system. What kind of Nazism can there be in a country in which over the past 18 years, since 2004, candidates from the extreme right to the extreme left have been elected for president. And in 2019, the people, wanting changes for the better, elected the artist Volodymyr Zelensky as president of Ukraine. How can we talk about Nazism in such a democratic country as Ukraine? The leadership and organizational abilities of Vladimir Zelensky, which were formed in the 95th quarter project, were fully manifested with the outbreak of the war with the Russian Federation. The former artist and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky has turned into the greatest leader who has united not only the entire people of Ukraine, but the whole world around him.

Nazizm i imperializm niemiecki w przedwojennej publicystyce Juliusza Mieroszewskiego

The main purpose of the article is to present the pre-war views of Juliusz Mieroszewski on Germany. The research problem will be considered in relation to the international situation, the development of the Nazi system and German-Polish relations. The article aims to verify the hypothesis that Mieroszewski aptly recognizes contemporary trends. Mieroszewski’s journalism analysis and archival sources were used to present the research problem.

Legal indeterminacy and authoritarianism: Notes on William Scheuerman’s The End of Law

Scheuerman’s book is one of the handful of significant attempts to rethink Schmitt’s work systematically over the past four decades. In so doing, he raises three key questions for me. First, is Schmitt’s work a sincere contribution to legal and political theory, or an attempt to argue for setting the rule of law aside for authoritarianism, that is, an instrumental critique of indeterminacy? Second, to what extent is Schmitt – critical of the ‘bourgeois’ rule of law, critical of globalization – really a thinker defending capitalism? Can he really be associated with the Ordoliberals (even if they adopted his arguments from 1931 to 1932 in their own writing of the time)? Third, to what extent were Schmitt’s early contributions to National Socialist law aimed at responding to legal indeterminacy, and to what extent did they in fact point towards a radicalism of German law within the Nazi system, especially insofar as they endorsed making decisions based on the principles of justice of the Nazi state – and potentially against the express language of statutes?

Political follower or loyal National Socialist? : On the role of former DGP President Herbert Siegmund (1892-1954) in the Third Reich.

Herbert Siegmund (1892-1954) was undoubtedly one of the most influential German pathologists of the 20th century. He received numerous high honors both during the Third Reich and after 1945. He was, among other things, rector of the University of Münster (1943-1945), holder of the Goethe Medal awarded by Hitler (1944), honorary doctor of the University of Cologne (1949), recipient of the Paracelsus Medal (1953), and president of the German Society for Pathology (DGP, 1954). The almost seamless post-war career was possible above all because Siegmund was counted among the politically uninvolved university physicians after 1945. It was not until after the turn of the millennium that this picture cracked. The article is based on primary sources from the State Archives of Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, the University Archives of Münster, the Federal Archives of Berlin, the University Archives of Cologne, and the City Archives of Stuttgart, some of which were evaluated for the first time. Two questions are at the center of this article: (1)To what extent can it be proven that Siegmund benefited from the Nazi state in terms of his career after 1933? (2)Are there indications that he served the Nazi regime and its networks? In addition, we will discuss how Siegmund himself described his role in the Third Reich and whether his statements stand up to critical scrutiny. The paper concludes that Siegmund contributed to valorizing the Nazi system. After 1945, he did not position himself at acritical distance from his activities in the Third Reich; rather, he drew of himself - largely unopposed - the image of apolitically blameless scholar.

Polycentric Monocracy of the Third Reich

The aim of this paper are to present the essence of the Nazi system of government and to create its system characteristics. The analysis, based on normative sources and key literature, allowed to conclude that the effect of the process of transformation of the described phenomenon led to the emergence of ideologically-orientated polycentric monocracy. The article is based on the Franciszek Ryszka’s conceptualization of the “martial law State”. In the following chapters of the paper a synthetic characteristics of the Nazi empire in occupied Europe was drafted up, including the legal and administrative peculiarities of particular territories. The article is accompanied by the tabular index of hierarchy of official ranks in Third Reich.

Polityczność sztuki. Analiza pracy Zbigniewa Libery pt. LEGO. Obóz koncentracyjny z 1996 roku

The objective of the paper is to analyze Zbigniew Libera’s Lego. Concentration Camp from 1996, which is considered to be one of the most important Polish works of art in the 1990s. Lego exemplifies the problem of the politicality of art which consists of art’s involvement in politics. The considerations on the permeation of the fields of politics and esthetics constitute a sig- nificant part of the work of French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, whose concepts provide the theoretical foundations for the analysis of Libera’s Lego. The juxtaposition of toys with the symbol of the Holocaust raises questions about the role of art in uncovering the discourse of power as understood by Michel Foucault, the influence of public policies (cultural, educational policies and the policy towards the past) on art and the borders of commercialization and trivialization of the symbols of collective memory. Libera’s Lego is a transgressive work, representing the trend of so-called critical art in modern Polish art. The artist used artistic methods to break the cultural taboo that concerns the presentation of the non-presentable. Libera showed the past and the present, the former by re- ferring to the topic of the Holocaust, indicating the pragmatism of the Nazi system, and the lat- ter by uncovering the laws of the teaching process, carried out by means of repeating patterns. Above all, however, Libera showed that artistic activity can be a form of expressing interests and can influence the shape of public policies.

Development of the Holocaust-Rescuers’ Study and Its Educational Implications

이 글은 홀로코스트 연구에서 구조자 문제가 하나의 독립 주제로 성장해 온 과정을 파악하고, 그 연구가 갖는 사회-교육적 효과를 제시한다. 이를 위해 이 글에서는 세 가지 점을 파악하는데 주력하였다. 첫째, 구조자 연구에서 주축을 이루어온 심리-사회적 접근의 성과와 현안을 파악하고, 그 한계를 극복하기 위한 시도들을 정리하였다. 둘째, 홀로코스트 시기에 구조 활동에 참여했던 사람들이 이차 대전 이후 서구 세계에서 어떻게 공인되고 국가적으로 기념되어 왔는지를 살펴보았다. 셋째, 이러한 공적 관심이 후속 세대들의 기억 창출을 위해 교육 부문에서 결실을 맺은 사례를 검토함으로써, 교육자산으로서 홀로코스트 구조자들의 의미를 확인하였다. 홀로코스트의 다른 주제들에 비해, 구조자 연구는 정치적 논쟁에서 상대적으로 자유로우면서도 교육적 효과는 매우 큰 편이다. 역사적 경험에 기반을 둔 구조 연구가 교육에 통합되면, 훨씬 더 다양한 역할모델들을 제공해줄 수 있기 때문이다. 홀로코스트의 구조자들은 대부분 평범한 사람들이었기에 그만큼 더 동일화가 수월한 역할모델로 수용될 수 있다. 또한 구조자들의 행동은 대부분의 사람들이 동의하거나 방조했던 유대인 학살의 길 외에 실행 가능한 대안이 있었다는 사실을 입증해주기에 정치적 기념과 사회적 교육에 전망을 제공해줄 수 있다.The paper is to apprehend the development of the study of Holocaust - rescuers in the last two generations and to make clear of its educational effect on the society. It consists of three parts . First , it tries to grasp the accomplishments and main issues of the psycho - social study on rescuers during the Holocaust and to examine various attempts to overcome the limitations of the psychological analysis . Second, it reviews how the Holocaust - rescuers have been commemorated as the righteous in public sphere . Third , it analyses educational implications of the Holocaust - rescuers by examining the case of Chiune Sugihara , a Japanese diplomat . In comparison to other issues of the Holocaust , the one regarding rescuers is relatively free from political controversies , while it has a much greater educational use . Historical research on the rescuers can provide the younger generations with useful role - models . Holocaust - helpers were mostly ordinary people and can be easily accepted as role - models by learners . Moreover , they show a feasible alternative to mass - murders under the Nazi system and thereby could offer a future - oriented perspective to the nation regarding public commemoration and education .

Afro-German Histories at the Time of the Second World War. The Transnational Memooirs by Ruth Kluger and Hans-Jurgen Massaquoi

The point of departure in the present article is a discussion of the concept of multidirectional memory, the category proposed by Michael Rothberg in his book ANGIELSKI TYTUŁ. The article then analyzes the memoirs by Jewish-Austrian Ruth Klüger and Afro-German Hans-Jürgen Massaquoia, as examples of transnational narratives. It thus highlights the problem of the war experience of black Germans, concomitantly tracing the process of identity formation resulting from an ethnic person’s dialogue with the representatives of other marginalized and oppressed groups within the Nazi system

Document and Analyze: The Legacy of Klemperer, Fraenkel, and Neumann for Contemporary Human Rights Engagement

Human rights discourse has been criticized for being legalistic, decontextualized, and failing to focus on factors explaining violations. Victor Klemperer’s diaries chronicled the life and suffering of a German Jew in Nazi Germany and the manipulation of language by a totalitarian regime. Ernst Fraenkel’s Dual State and Franz Neumann’s Behemoth set out theories offering profound insights into the legal and political nature of the Nazi system. Revisiting their work from a human rights perspective is richly rewarding, providing examples of engaged scholarship that combined documentation and critical analysis. Their writings hold important lessons for contemporary human rights engagement and its critics.

Negotiating the limits of upbringing, education, and racial hygiene in Nazi Germany as exemplified in the study and treatment of Sinti and Roma

Like other minorities, Sinti and Roma were victims of racial persecution by the Nazis. For this group in particular, the Racial-Hygienic and Heredity Research Centre in the Reich Health Office became a central institution in the Nazi system of extermination. Eva Justin, a reseacher at the Centre, published her doctoral dissertation while working there. The dissertation discusses the possibility of ‘educating’ Sinti and Roma and of making them useful to the German Volksgemeinschaft (‘community of the people’). In this article, I examine Justin’s notions of a subject’s capacity to be brought up and educated and how these notions can be understood in the context of antiziganism, racial hygiene, and National Socialism. In particular, I elucidate her notions of a subject’s capacity to be brought up and educated and the attributes and interpretative framework with which she contrued Sinti and Roma as ‘objects of upbringing and education’.

Dobro w kontekstach III Rzeszy. Refleksja wstępna

Speaking on good in context of Third Reich is a big challenge for a scholar. Realities of German national community – as projected and actualized by Nazis – which based on total exclusion (including physical extermination) of some ethic groups, causes that in order to find something or someone what/who was good there, one needs to refer to statements of the people who took exception to the system and stayed beyond it or on its rim. In this article authoress focuses on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s diaries, where author depicts years 1936-1942 spent on conspiracy, and chosen documents from Nuremberg trials which reveals enormity of crime made by Nazi system.

Anti-Semitism, Anti-Marxism, and Technophobia: The Fourth Volume of Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks (1942–1948)

The fourth volume of Martin Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks) was published in March 2015. It contains philosophical notes written in the years 1942–1948. This contribution discusses the role of anti-Semitism, the hatred of modernity, democracy, Marxism and socialism, the belittlement of the Nazi system, and the opposition to modern media and technologies that can be found in the book. It also provides English translations of some of the book’s key passages.Image source: By: Andreas Praefcke (Own work (own photograph)) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

About Mad and Bad Psychiatrists

Medical doctors have a powerfull profession with a high degree of freedom in their therapeutic relationship and treatment. Although there are some disadvantages with regard to this power and freedom. In this paper, some common vulnerabilities and psychiatric disorders in doctors/psychiatrists will be reviewed. Next, according to Gunn (2006), there are, perhaps, eight ways in which psychiatric power can be abused: 'social purification', people who are mentally normal treated as mad, psychiatric techniques used for oppression, the punishment of mentally disordered people, general maltreatment, excessive/inappropriate use of treatments, cruel and dangerous experiments, and not treating a mental disorder. Finally, the Nazi system was the most extreme example of 'social purification' using medical techniques by violent doctors.

REWORDING THE PAST: THE POSTWAR PUBLICATION OF A 1938 LECTURE BY MARTIN HEIDEGGER

In 1950 Martin Heidegger published his 1938 lecture “Die Zeit des Weltbildes” in the essay collectionHolzwege. He did so in order to document his “inner resistance” after the mid-1930s against the Nazi regime. This text has since been seen as evidence for Heidegger's early rejection of National Socialism and his refusal of a modern ideology that culminated in the totalitarian system. In spite of its influence, the published text has never been compared to the original lecture delivered in 1938. The assessment has now been made, and the differences between the two documents are a striking testimony to the artful falsifications that Heidegger used to re-establish his reputation and philosophical standing after the collapse of the Nazi system.

The “Nazi Detective” as Provider of Justice in Post-1990 British and German Crime Fiction: Philip Kerr's The Pale Criminal, Robert Harris's Fatherland, and Richard Birkefeld and Göran Hachmeister's Wer übrig bleibt, hat recht

The “Nazi Detective” as Provider of Justice in Post-1990 British and German Crime Fiction: Philip Kerr's <i>The Pale Criminal</i>, Robert Harris's <i>Fatherland</i>, and Richard Birkefeld and Göran Hachmeister's <i>Wer übrig bleibt, hat recht</i>

Genetics as a Modernization Program: Biological Research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes and the Political Economy of the Nazi State

During the Third Reich, the biological institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft) underwent a substantial reorganization and modernization. This paper discusses the development of projects in the fields of biochemical genetics, virus research, radiation genetics, and plant genetics that were initiated in those years. These cases exemplify, on the one hand, the political conditions for biological research in the Nazi state. They highlight how leading scientists advanced their projects by building close ties with politicians and science-funding organizations and companies. On the other hand, the study examines how the contents of research were shaped by, and how they contributed to, the aims and needs of the political economy of the Nazi system. This paper therefore aims not only to highlight basic aspects of scientific development under Nazism, but also to provide general insights into the structure of the Third Reich and the dynamics of its war economy.