Nazi Germany Research Articles

Scientific, bibliometric and biographical analysis of 71 Jewish and dissident pharmacologists persecuted in Germany between 1933 and 1945.

Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology, founded in 1873, is the oldest pharmacological journal. This study sheds light on the influence of persecution and expulsion of Jewish and dissident German pharmacologists during the Nazi era (1933-1945) on their scientific work and publication behaviour. The analysis is based on the German-language book 'Verfolgte deutschsprachige Pharmakologen (persecuted German-speaking pharmacologists) 1933-1945' by Trendelenburg and Löffelholz (2008), which contains short biographies of 71 persecuted pharmacologists. We analysed their publication activity from 1900 to 1980, the topics of the publications and the emigration data. Most persecuted pharmacologists emigrated, with two peaks of emigration around 1933 and 1938. Most pharmacologists emigrated to the USA, followed by Great Britain. Five of the scientists who emigrated to Great Britain were elected to the British Pharmacological Society's Pharmacology Hall of Fame, and one of them was a Nobel Laureate. Very few of the emigrated pharmacologists returned to Germany. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the share of papers by persecuted pharmacologists in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology dropped sharply. At around 1936, several of the persecuted pharmacologists began to publish increasingly in the American competitor journal, the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. The persecuted pharmacologists who emigrated to Great Britain had a major influence on the British Journal of Pharmacology, founded in 1946, as initially, they accounted for a high proportion of publications. We further analysed the papers published in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology by persecuted pharmacologists between 1933 and 1945. About half of these papers were submitted from abroad, indicating that despite the persecution and repression, papers from persecuted pharmacologists previously working at German institutes were still published during this period. Most of the papers by persecuted pharmacologists published from German institutes during this period were published under regime-critical or politically persecuted institute directors. Persecuted pharmacologists covered a huge spectrum of scientific topics, highlighting their immense scientific impact. After World War II, Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology lost much of its previous thematic diversity for decades. Overall, our analyses highlight the enormous loss to German pharmacology due to the persecution, exclusion and expulsion of 'non-Aryan' pharmacologists. Conversely, pharmacology of the USA and Great Britain benefited greatly from the emigration of distinguished scientists from Germany.

Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Pulpit and the Confessing Church, by William Skiles

Preaching to Nazi Germany: The Pulpit and the Confessing Church, by William Skiles

WHO SOUNDS MOST WORTHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS? AURAL CULTURAL DIVERSITY, THE CONCEPT OF HUMANITY AND THEIR RELIGIOUS INVESTMENTS IN GERMAN LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES

ABSTRACTThis article introduces aural cultural diversity as an important criterion with regard to human rights. By ‘aural cultural diversity’, I mean thinking about human diversity based not on ocular‐centric notions of race but on how the particularity of peoples becomes manifest in their differentiated manners of listening and responding to the sounds of spoken language. The concept of humanity, although it presents itself as inclusive and universal, emerges from a Christian theory of monogenesis. The fall of the tower of Babel and the subsequent diversity of spoken languages is a problem for theories of the origins of humanity ordained by God. The German ‘science’ of comparative linguistics can be viewed as a strategy to maintain Christian control over aural cultural diversity, creating hierarchies between languages based on seemingly objective grammatical and lexical rules. It bore consequences for the human rights of those peoples who spoke languages in non‐standard, deviant or unexpected ways. While it is well established that the theory of Indo‐European language groups was used as a defence against virulent nationalism and fascism in Germany, are there more subtle and lasting consequences of dehumanisation based on listening to a hierarchy of sounds marked as ‘different’ and ‘other’?

German-Speaking Émigré Economists in Great Britain and the Analysis of the German War Economy

The need for analysis of the German war economy became urgent after the defeat of France and the threat of an invasion of Britain by Nazi Germany after the battle of Dunkirk in the summer of 1940. The expertise of émigré scholars now was in strong demand. First, this essay discusses the series of twelve articles that Hans Singer contributed at the request of Keynes to the Economic Journal from 1940 to 1944. An important characteristic of war economies is a shortage of consumer goods, which raises the question of the appropriate rationing scheme. Therefore, the notion of a virtual price system, introduced by Erwin Rothbarth, which takes note of the welfare consequences of interventions into the free choices of consumers, is the focus of the next section. Hal C. Hillmann was a leading analyst of the German war economy, the comparative strength of the great powers, and postwar reconstruction. Finally, the article discusses the role of Nicholas Kaldor, who had firsthand knowledge as a key member of the research team of highbrow economists chaired by John Kenneth Galbraith that at the end of the war studied the effects of Allied bombing on the German war economy. Kaldor's experience, also as the director of the Research and Planning Division of the UN Economic Commission for Europe from 1947 to 1949, significantly influenced his pioneering contributions to growth theory.

Johannes Schröder in the Resistance Against Hitler

Abstract: After joining the National Committee for a Free Germany, Military Chaplain Johannes Schröder, taken prisoner by the Soviets in Stalingrad, was able to address listeners in Germany over Radio Moscow from the fall of 1943 until the fall of 1945. More than eighty of his sermons and speeches have been preserved and published as a book in 2021. In this article, two of these pieces are published in an English translation, supplemented by an introduction that explains the historical context. Schröder openly demanded the overthrow of Hitler and the Nazi Regime in Germany. For Schröder, confessing German guilt was a precondition for the creation of a new Germany. While leaders of the Confessing Church like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller had been silenced by the Nazis, Schröder was able to explain the fundamental theological tenets that had been formulated at Barmen in 1934. Schröder’s speeches and sermons therefore offer an exciting new view of the resistance against Hitler.

Hungarian National Socialists from the End of World War II to the Collapse of the Soviet Regime

Abstract This article describes the writings of one group of Hungarians in exile: the National Socialists in the period 1945–91. The followers of Ferenc Szálasi, the head of the short-lived National Socialist government, remained united. They found nothing in their past that they were willing to repudiate. They were proud of the Hungarian past and felt other nations did not appreciate Hungarian achievements. They remained convinced that Hungary by fighting on the side of Nazi Germany in fact had been protecting Western Europe from Communist tyranny. They looked at the liberal West with hostility. They claimed to see the conspiracies of the Jews both in the Soviet Union and in the United States.

Persecutory policies against Roma in Nazi Germany

The article provides an analysis of the persecution measures against the Roma in Nazi Germany, identifying what measures were taken and, in particular, what tragic consequences they led to on a practical level. The article comparatively analyzes various aspects of the persecution of Roma in Germany, and indeed throughout Europe, preceding the totalitarian seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 and the emergence of Nazi Germany. The main focus is on identifying the stages of the persecution policy in Nazi Germany against Roma, as well as the chronology of the adoption of the persecution policy against Roma in Nazi Germany in 1933-1945. As a result, a turning point in the anti-Roma policy is identified and characterized, which included both the freezing of Roma mobility and the resettlement of Roma, as well as their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Vilnius, which did not become the capital of West Belarus

The article deals with the problem of the State dependence of Vilnius on the eve and at the beginning of World War II (August–October 1939). The problem of Vilnius is considered within the broad context of international relations in Europe. Special attention is devoted to the plans and actions on the eve of Poland’s onslaught and in the second half of September 1939. After the partition by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union the spheres of influence of Poland and the Baltic States, the question of occupation and annexation of the eastern lands of Poland (Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and Vilnius Territory) came forth. The Soviets planned to settle that issue by staging the independent accession of the occupied territories to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the settlement of the issue of Vilnius was far more complicated than the incorporation of the eastern lands of Poland. Even in the secret protocols of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact it was foreseen to take into account the interests of Lithuania in the Vilnius Territory. J. Stalin used Vilnius as the means of pressure on Lithuania seeking to sign the agreement of mutual assistance and to dislocate the Soviet military bases in Lithuania. The Soviets threatened to annex the Vilnius Territory to the Byelorussian SSR in the case Lithuania refused to allow the stationing of the Soviet military bases. Vilnius became a certain Trojan horse, which opened the gates to the subjugation of Lithuania and other Baltic States.

What Did Béla Bartók's Five Hungarian Folk Songs Want to Do at the 1938 Baden-Baden Festival

AbstractThe peasant music Béla Bartók first discovered in 1904 and which he collected systematically between 1906 and 1918 belongs to what he generally described as “Eastern Europe.” His career as pianist and composer was naturally oriented towards Western Europe. His contract with one of the most important publishing houses of the period interested in contemporary music, Universal Edition in Vienna, seems to have conserved a Central European network during the interwar period – a network originating in the by then dissolved Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Apart from pointing out the conspicuous contrast between Bartók's concept of Eastern Europe and his Central European position as an intellectual, this article revisits a particular historic event, the new music festival organized in April, 1938 in Baden-Baden, to examine Bartók's concept through his art and careful politics during a period of heightened tensions. Since the premiere of his Second Piano Concerto in Frankfurt in January, 1933, Bartók had avoided giving concerts in Nazi Germany. When invited to offer a piece for the 1938 festival he proposed Five Hungarian Folk Songs for voice and orchestra (1933). Despite his initial consent, however, he later tried to withdraw the work and forbid its performance shortly before the start of the festival; in the end his work did remain in the program despite his protest. His peculiar strategy on this occasion seems to have been prompted by his dispute with the German copyright office (STAGMA), which categorized his works in which he used folk melodies as mere arrangements, declaring them unoriginal. It appears that Bartók might have consciously offered such a “questionable” work to demonstrate its originality. At the same time, however, it seems that this particular set might have had a special topical message, too. Starting with a deeply-felt composition based on a song considered to belong to the most ancient layers of indigenous Hungarian folk music, it ends with a grotesque arrangement of a folk song which Bartók described as of Western, probably German, origin. One might wonder whether it was intentional to offer a narrative that contrasts the values of indigenous East European folklore with the shallowness of Western, specifically German, influence. The Appendix of the article presents an English translation of Bartók's notes about his composition sent to the organizers of the Baden-Baden festival.

Soviet Partisans in Lithuania in 1941–1944: Aspects of Repressive (Terrorist) Activity

The article deals with the establishment of the Soviet armed underground in the years of the Nazi Germany occupation (1941–1944), revealing its complicated situation and reasons, predetermining its repressive activity aspects – the use of coercion and violence. The expression of those activity aspects, concrete attempts to effect terror acts (political assassinations) against the German occupational regime, Lithuanian administration officers, political and military figures are elucidated on the basis of archival sources. Soviet armed underground in Lithuania had the strong, many-sided and multiple repressive origin. In the spring of 1941–1942, the most important role in the organization of Soviet resistance belonged to the USSR NKGB–NKVD bodies. Already in July-August 1941, twelve NKGB–NKVD groups, 85 people, were sent to Lithuania for terrorist (also for intelligence and sabotage) actions. Those groups were not able to develop any activities in Lithuania, almost all participants of those groups perished. From the end of 1942, the Soviet partisan resistance was organized and guided by the Communist Party institutions, attempting to organize the Soviet underground on the broader political and social basis. The participants of the Soviet underground were: 1) groups sent from the Soviet rear; 2) Soviet prisoners of war; 3) Jews who avoided the holocaust; 4) Lithuanian (and of other countries) inhabitants of other nationalities, most of whom suffered the German repressions. On the eve of the war (1940), in the USSR-occupied and annexed Lithuania, no prerequisites and conditions existed for the Soviet underground activity, the majority of the population did not support it, its participants maintained their existence only by repressions, coercion and violence. Directives for terrorist actions were given from the leading centres in the Soviet rear. Soviet partisans prepared unsuccessfully actions against the high-rank German occupational regime officers (General Commissioner in Lithuania Adrian von Renteln, Vilnius Command Commissioner Horst Wulff, etc.), the organizer of the local Lithuanian detachment Gen. Povilas Plechavičius. On the initiative of the Lithuanian national underground and supported by its participants, the Soviet partisans in March 1944 in the Švenčionys County killed two German leading economic executives (Fritz Ohl and Ernest Heinemann). The article, on the basis of indirect sources, makes a presumption that special Soviet underground groups at the end of April 1944 near Kaunas murdered the high-rank Orthodox Church clergyman Sergyi (Voskresenski).

Silence is Complicity: Theological Failure in the Face of Genocide

Abstract In this article, we argue that public theologians have a rich tradition from which to argue for the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. In particular, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the co-opting of Christianity by the Nazi regime is frequently cited in theological circles as an exemplar. Yet, we find major public figures and theological societies, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the United Kingdom’s Society for the Study of Theology (SST) to be wanting in this regard. From an examination of Welby’s comments on the Israeli bombardment in Gaza, and the SST’s response to our open letter and the lament from Palestinian Christians, we argue that theologians are failing. We draw on Palestinian liberation theology and anticolonial theologies to argue that the work of liberation is the raison d’être of theology and requires political activism. We conclude, therefore, that theological silence is complicity in injustice.

Philipp Schwartz, one of the pioneers of perinatal pathology was born 130 years ago (1894-1977), who escaped hundreds of scientists from Nazi Germany

Philipp Schwartz, one of the pioneers of perinatal pathology was born 130 years ago (1894-1977), who escaped hundreds of scientists from Nazi Germany

Jonas Ženauskas – Soviet Prisoner of 1940–1941, Member of the July Uprising of 1941, Rescuer of Jews

This article is mostly concerned with the biographical facts of Jonas Ženauskas, a Bolshevik prisoner of 1940-1941, anti-Soviet rebel and Jewish rescuer; these facts were mainly determined by the occupations of 1940-1944 and the Nazi Germany–Bolshevik Soviet Union war. It describes Soviet repressions, Ženauskas’ imprisonment and torture in Kaunas and NKVD prisons, as well as the liberation of prisoners on 23 June 1941. The June uprising of 1941 took place in Kaunas. Freed from prison, Ženauskas joined the uprising, armed about 50 rebels with guns, and guarded Kaunas radiophone. From August 1941 Ženauskas worked in Vilnius Criminal Police, and helped those arrested, including the Jews. He was arrested for this in 1942 by the German security police SD, and was imprisoned for seven days. As he did not regain his full health following his imprisonment in the Soviet prison, he quit the service in 1943 and returned to Kaunas. The Ženauskas family was successfully hiding 4 Jews who had escaped from the Kaunas ghetto until the end of the Nazi occupation. However, on the second day after the Red Army pushed out the German Wehrmacht, Ženauskas was arrested by the Soviet counterintelligence SMERSH. The officers of this service were not interested in the fact that he had rescued Jews, but instead accused him of non-existent crimes, and he was sentenced to death by shooting by the military tribunal (carried out on 2 March 1945). A criminal case was also initiated against his wife Sofija, and she and their two children only escaped exile by a hair’s breadth. Even during the Soviet period (1988), thanks to the efforts of his daughter Virginija Mačiulienė, as well as the two Jewish sisters saved by the Ženauskas family, Chana Lisienė and Merė Pilvinskaitė, the case was renewed. In 1989 he was vindicated. During the tragic turns of history which Lithuania and its people underwent in 1940–1944, Jonas Ženauskas, in spite of the violence inflicted on him by the Soviets, passed the human test and acting on his Christian convictions, humanistic values, assisted those persecuted, and rescued Jews, despite the death threats the Nazis had issued for such activity. Unfortunately on 2 March 2 1945, he was executed by the Bolsheviks who reoccupied Lithuania. The lives of everyone who lived through that period were shaped by the events of 1939–1944. There will never be too much historiography about them. New research, memoirs and publication of sources bring us closer to a more objective understanding of Lithuanian history, as well as an evaluation of its processes and facts both in our own country and abroad.

The Nazi Bomb Project: A Case Study of Value Neutrality in Science and Technology

Scientists in Nazi Germany attempted but failed to build an atomic bomb or working nuclear reactor during the years of the Second World War, 1939-1945. Can philosophical meaning be drawn from this history? The history of the Nazi scientists and nuclear fission raises important issues concerning the alleged value-neutrality of scientific research and technological development. We can also ask whether there is an ethical dimension to the failure of the Nazi bomb project. Did the scientists who worked in the Third Reich make a moral decision not to complete the development of a working nuclear reactor and/or a usable nuclear explosive device? In this essay, I argue that Werner Heisenberg and other Nazi scientists fell victim to a value-neutral conception of science that led them to make unethical choices in support of the Nazi regime. The story of the Nazi bomb project exemplifies a more general philosophical point: if scientists fail to understand the social, political, and cultural context of their research they will be vulnerable to ethically wrong decisions.

Schönberg, Trauma, and the Unrepresentable

This examination raises the possibility, that the completion of Schönberg's opera Moses und Aron became impossible in light of antisemitism and the Holocaust, Schönberg’s personal memory of the family’s precipitous flight from Nazi Germany just as Act II was completed, and the murders of those relatives left behind. Did Schönberg suffer from a resulting form of writer’s block, in whicha hopeful conclusion to Act III of the opera could no longer be envisioned? Extant text sketches for Act III suggest a grim post-traumatic reaction, and preoccupation with a militant version of Zionism. To understand these factors, we must first examine the vicissitudes of Schönberg’s cultural and political identifications over many years.

DENAZIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM IN OCCUPIED GERMANY 1945–1949

The policy of denazification pursued by the victors in occupied Germany, which is discussed in the article, is reflected in published sources, research, and memoirs. However, most of them concern practical measures aimed at eliminating the Nazi regime, primarily the identification and punishment of war criminals. It was much more difficult with the ideology of Nazism, which had penetrated deeply into German society. The problem was also the initial lack of understanding of its content and role in the formation of a totalitarian regime. The war had showed what a real threat to humanity the ideas and designs of German fascism, striving for world domination, posed. During the occupation period, the Allies had to rebuild the education system, upbringing, culture, social relations, and social life of the Germans. The ambiguity of approaches, which took place in the policy of all the occupation authorities in Germany, nevertheless showed us that the main tasks of denazification were indeed solved. However, the process of “overcoming the totalitarian pastˮ did not end there and had its continuation in the German history of the second half of the 20th century.

The Enlightenment Committee of Hamburg-Bremen and the Nazi Seizure of Power: the Case of "Self-Coordination"?

The subject of the study is the "coordination" of the Enlightenment Committee Hamburg-Bremen after the Nazis came to power. The purpose of the study is to characterize the process of including this organization in the system of the state apparatus of Nazi Germany. The article analyzes documents from the collections of Russian, German and British archives. The study revealed that the attitude of the Enlightenment Committee Hamburg-Bremen to the Nazi regime was due to a number of reasons: the negative impact of the world economic crisis of 1929-1933 and, against this background, increased interaction with the state even before the Nazis came to power; the rapprochement of some Hamburg and Bremen entrepreneurs with the Nazi Party at the decline of the Weimar Republic due to the success of the party in local and national elections; the rapid process of "coordination" of Hamburg and Bremen and their chambers of commerce after the Nazis came to power; dissatisfaction with the existing system of foreign propaganda, hopes for its strengthening in new conditions. The article shows that the management of the Enlightenment Committee Hamburg-Bremen itself sought to make the organization under the control of the Hitler regime, therefore, even before officially joining the structure of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, it carried out personnel "coordination" and began to produce materials in a pro-Nazi manner. In Nazi Germany, the Hamburg-based organization came under state control and was provided with stable funding and other support. The previous areas of activity have been preserved and strengthened. The result of the study is the conclusion that in relation to the Enlightenment Committee Hamburg-Bremen, we should not talk about forced "coordination", but rather about "self-coordination".

After All These Years, Still Divided by Memories? East Central Europe and European Union Politics of Memory Twenty Years after the Enlargement

The article analyzes how central and eastern European members of the EU relate to the main nodes of the EU’s politics of memory, such as the first and second world wars, the Holocaust as Europe’s negative founding myth, Soviet Communism being equally as criminal as the Nazi regime, expulsions as a pan-European trauma, the legacy of colonialism, Europe as a continent of immigration, and Europe’s post-1945 success story. The author argues that mnemonic divides between the West and East in Europe remain visible despite the EU’s efforts to bridge this gap over the twenty years since the 2004 enlargement.

Etruscologia e ideologia nel XX secolo

Etruscology developed in the 20th century as a scientific discipline thanks to and against the ideologies of its time. In Italy, between Unification and the March on Rome, Etruscan studies were encouraged by an exacerbated nationalism. Once Unity was achieved, the Italians had to be made, considering the Etruscans the precursors of Rome and the ancestors of the Italians. Then, from 1922 until the end of World War II, Fascism favoured the structuring of Etruscology thanks to the Istituto di Studi Etruschi, which gave the discipline international visibility, but Fascism also oriented a whole series of Italian studies towards the idea of the autochthony of the Etruscans, against that of a heteroctony, promoted by Nazi Germany to identify the Etruscans as oriental individuals of an inferior race. Only slowly did Etruscologists shed the values associated with fascism and turn towards liberalism or communism to renew their conception of the origin, society and art of the Etruscans.

Cruising Europe in World War II: Epistemological Challenges of German Vernacular Trophy Photography

The Nazi regime outfitted the Wehrmacht with the best photographic technology and its soldiers were far better equipped than their allies or nemeses. More than ten per cent of the eighteen million German combatants possessed a fast-shutter 35-mm camera. German soldier-photographers documented their wartime activities extensively, in turn leaving behind a gigantic, private and largely underexplored archive that poses multiple epistemological and ethical challenges. Military historians and Holocaust scholars approach soldierly photographs primarily as sources of information, including proof of crimes. This article shifts these lenses and argues that reading them as visual images, and not solely as historical sources and circulating artefacts, reveals a medium that equally affects its practitioners as well as the observers. Drawing upon public archives and private collections, I focus on highly performative images of victory and conquest over enemy countries and peoples and conceptualise them as ‘trophy photographs’. I examine recurrent motifs within this genre, in particular sexual encounters with enemy women and photographs of male bonding, which arguably constitute the most prevalent images snapped by soldier-photographers who ‘cruised’ Nazi-occupied Europe. Borrowing from Queer Studies, the concept of cruising allows me to probe soldiers’ mobility in semipublic spaces and also acknowledge the voyeuristic and visually alluring quality of their photographs. Seductive, exciting, these trophy photographs lure in their audience(s) with sexually charged, often (homo)erotic overtones. In turn, these images provoke diverse ways of seeing and interpreting their content: how can we best frame the soldier-photographer’s gaze and capture the polysemic quality of the images, especially when dealing with violence, racism, sexism and/or homoeroticism? What effect do trophy images of conquest potentially have on the historical actors who shot and circulated those photographs and what impact do they have on contemporary observers? Finally, acknowledging multidirectional and fractious lives of images, how do we understand the complex relationship between public history and the ethics of seeing? Because photographic images are historically contingent and open-ended, this article casts light on the complexity of mediation and competing visions between diverse publics of the past, present and future.