Third Reich

Although it has been claimed that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's controversial 1933 essay on "The Church and the Jewish Question" is riddled with inconsistencies, I argue that the essay is entirely consistent at least on the issue of church action with respect to the state. Seeing this requires recognizing that the essay is driven by the logic of the two kingdoms, that Lutheran way of understanding God's action in two dimensions of life, the spiritual and temporal.

This review discusses Rousseau's concepts of social contract and general will in his work "The Social Contract" and contrasts those views with the constitutional principles of representation and individual rights found in the United States and other democratic republics.

Front page, table of contents and introductory article to an edited volume of a conference at Yad Vashem in December 2010.  Includes an introductory article by the editor: 'Beyond "Righteous Among the Nations" and "Altruism": On Rescuers and Rescue Activities During the Shoah

What exactly is the historical event commonly called ‘The Holocaust’? When reading the enormous historiography on ‘The Holocaust’ one becomes aware that the term is used in various meanings and that important aspects of the event itself are ignored. This essay discusses several issues: first, the epithet ‘The Holocaust’ and its equivalents and the history of their usage; second, the meaning of the fact that the Jewish aspect of the Nazi enterprise has a separate heading; and third, how to historically determine the core characteristics of this event?

A short overview of historiography on the years 1933-1945 (surveying the period 1990-2018).
This article was posted with special permission of the publisher. For the entire volume see:
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+the+Holocaust-p-9781118970508

The debate surrounding the relation between Hitler’s interest in architectural neo-classicism and his reception of antiquity has often proceeded from the assumption of a deep nostalgia for a (deeply mythicised) classical ‘Aryan’ past and an instinctive drive to use anti-modernist art for solely propagandistic ends. Whereas some have
attempted to invert this causal relationship, the present study situates Hitler’s artistic passion within his ‘biopolitical’ vision of the new Germany, cleansed of all that was deemed degenerate (entartet) and unassimilable within the national community (gemeinschaftsunfähig). Through an analysis of the Third Reich’s vast civic building programmes, which takes into account Hitler’s personal discourse on the ancient past, we will show how both elements, that is Hitler’s ‘modernised’ neo-classicism and his view on antiquity, can be seen as essentially complementary, and integral to his political programme. We will do so by firstly presenting an overview of the most typical examples of Hitler and Nazism’s use of an idiosyncratic version of neo-classically inspired civic architecture. After this we will focus on the Führer’s ‘artistic’ persona, both in the sense of his love for the arts, especially those referring to the formal language of antiquity, as in the sense of his biopolitical conception of Nazi life as a ‘work of art in progress’. Finally,
Hitler’s vision of artistic renaissance is located within a discourse of racial renewal which embraced the past and future within a this-worldly ‘eternity’.

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers.

My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers’ political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers’ ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase.

The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers’ ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers’ relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers’ domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs.

An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers’ motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers’ political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically “super-fascist”. The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascist ideology.

This paper outlines the life of Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and his philosophical works. It especially overviews his theory of "young" and "old" nations, his spiritual racial theory, his critique of Spengler, his theory and definitions of four political types (the Revolutionary, the Reactionary, the Liberal, the Conservative), his theory of volkisch nationalism and Revolutionary Conservatism, his critique of Marxism and materialism, his concept of democracy, his concept of the Third Reich, and his influence on National Socialism.

The paper was written for a dual purpose: on the one hand, it wanted to
indicate the possibility of examining the National Socialist language in
political science, and on the other hand, it sought to summarize the
results and shortcomings of the previous researches.
The study showed that the available literature – almost without
exception – agrees that the National Socialism was a caesura in the
history of the German language: the propaganda activity of this period
determined the long-term relationship of the people (and perhaps not only
the Germans) to the language. However, there is still no consensus on
whether we can talk about a separate, specific subject of linguistic history,
or a period of linguistic history with specific characteristics. In this
context, the paper outlined how to approach the subject: from the
perspective of the political vocabulary.
Apparently, there is a consensus that the National Socialist language
has descriptive, regular features. The writing presented what can be
known about the vocabulary of National Socialism in general. These lexical
features, without claiming to be exhaustive, are: militaristic and religious
symbols, the use of euphemism, the evocation of the Middle Ages and
German Romanticism. And its style can be described by the use of
superlatives, collective singular, words of foreign origin, nominative style,
and preface.

En la presente comunicación trato de abordar el fascismo como fenómeno histórico y, también, en su relación con la actualidad, el objetivo fundamental es tomarlo en serio desde una perspectiva política a la par que historiográfica, es decir, útil para la sociedad actual. Para ello aprovechamos el prisma que nos proporciona su proyecto político para un Nuevo Orden, muy vinculado a una concepción concreta de la utopía y nacido en un momento tan particular de crisis como el periodo de entreguerras.

Aus der Einleitung von Susanne Voss: "Die Rolle des Antisemitismus in Steindorffs Biografie ist Gegenstand des Beitrags von Thomas L. Gertzen. Sein Aufsatz behandelt die Frage,wann und in welcher Form sich Steindorff im Laufe seiner Karriere Diskriminierungen aufgrund seiner jüdischen Herkunft ausgesetzt sah und wie diese seine Stellung als Vertreter der Berliner Schule beeinflusst haben. Einen weiteren Schwerpunkt bildet sein Verhältnis zum späteren Berliner Lehrstuhlinhaber und Leiter des Wörterbuchs, dem NSDAP-Mitglied Hermann Grapow, als ein Beitrag zur Klärung der Hintergründe von Steindorffs Einschätzungen über Grapow in der Steindorff-Liste und ihrer (Quellen‐)kritischen Auswertung."

In this unfinished rough powerpoint for a series of lectures I explore why the United States is markedly different from other representative democracies and welfare states.  I trace the tradition of using a combination of bribery and corruption of the Congress and Judiciary, and violence and racist terror as a means of marginalizing organized labour and frustrating democratic control.  I explore how the contemporary crisis of social inequality, political corruption and racist authoritarian government long predates Trump, first emerging after Reconstruction in the Kleptocracy of the Gilded Age, receding somewhat under Roosevelt's leadership and with the Bretton Woods consensus, only to re-emerge with the Reagan revolution and the political triumph of the racist reaction to the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements, and the radicalism of the 1960s.  On the foreign policy side, the resurgent power of the oligarchy within the country and the brutal repression of the poor and marginalization of labour and the voices of the black radical tradition, symbolized by the ruins of Detroit and the South Bronx, would be matched by the consolidation of the policies of the so-called Washington Consensus.  This policy approach, enforced by the IMF, World Bank, and American military force and paramilitary violence, is often sold as Globalization, critiqued as Neo-liberalism, but might more accurately be described as a return to racist colonialism of the filibusters, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.  The talk, which is intended to engage non-academic audiences and avoid jargon and theory, ought to be read in conjunction with Richard Iton's Solidarity Blues, and WIlkinson and Pickett's The Spirit Level.

Resumo: Em virtude da popularização de textos em diversos sites e em redes sociais colocando o nazismo como uma ideologia de esquerda, contrariando parte considerável da historiografia séria produzida desde o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial, este artigo tem como objetivo elucidar a seguinte questão: "o nazismo era uma ideologia de direita ou de esquerda?". Para isto, serão trazidos argumentos encontrados em sites que defendem o ponto de vista revisionista e, em seguida, serão discutidos vários aspectos da doutrina hitlerista com base em uma revisão bibliográfica de cunho qualitativo, desde a ideologia em si até as ações do Partido Nazista enquanto este esteve no poder, a fim de examinar a posição do nacional-socialismo no espectro político-ideológico. Por fim, conclui-se que as premissas revisionistas são rasas, na maioria das vezes infundadas, podendo servir como mero recurso retórico de conservadores e grupos direitistas.

Abstract: Due to the popularization of texts on various websites and social networks, displaying Nazism as an ideology on the left, contrary to part of serious historiography since the end of World War II, this article aims to elucidate the following question: "Nazism was a right or left ideology?" For this, we will show arguments found in sites that define the revisionist point of view and then discuss various aspects of Hitler doctrine based on a qualitative bibliographical review, from an ideology itself to the actions of the Nazi Party while was in power, an end to examine the position of social-socialism on the political-ideological spectrum. Finally, it is concluded that the main revisions are shallow, mostly unfounded, using as the most rhetorical resource of conservatives and right-wing groups.

Resumo: A ideologia nazista surgiu após a Primeira Guerra Mundial a partir de características políticas, econômicas, sociais e até mesmo científicas singulares da Alemanha naquele período. Por isso, o presente artigo tem como objetivo responder a seguinte questão-problema: "como se formou o ideário político nazista?". Para tanto, foi realizada uma pesquisa em livros e artigos científicos avaliados por pares e indexados, constituindo um trabalho de revisão bibliográfica de cunho qualitativo, que levará em conta também experiências vividas por Hitler antes deste se tornar político. Conclui-se, ao fim, que o ideário nazista foi construído a partir de alguns fatos como a humilhação alemã pós-guerra, a rejeição ao comunismo, a popularização de teorias pseudocientíficas pautadas no darwinismo social e a crença na superioridade da raça ariana.

Palavras-chaves: Ideologia nazista; Doutrina nazista; Origem do nazismo.

Abstract: Nazi ideology emerged after the First World War from Germany's unique political, economic, social and even scientific characteristics at that time. For this reason, this article aims to answer the following question-problem: "how was the nazi political ideal formed?" To this end, a search was carried out on books and scientific articles evaluated by peers and indexed, constituting a qualitative bibliographic review work, which will also take into account Hitler's experiences before he became a politician. It concludes, in the end, that the nazi ideology was built from some facts like the postwar German humiliation, the rejection of communism, the popularization of pseudoscientific theories based on social darwinism and the belief in the Aryan race.

Der Autor stellte die Genese und das Verlauf des  beatifikationsverfahrens von 108 Martyrer  aus den Zeiten des II. Weltkrieges, darunter denen sich auch zwei Geistlichen aus der Kattowitzer Diözese:  Józef Czempiel und Emil Szramek befanden, dar. Es wurden chronologisch die Etappen des Verfahrens in  der Diözese und dann in der Kongregation für die Heiligsprechung. Es wurden die prophetische Ausmaßen der Opfer von des Pfarrers Emil Szramek, wie auch sein Platz in den Schlesien der Zwischenkriegszeiten  und in der Gegenwart unterzeichnet.