Search Results

Nazi Plans for Dominating Germany and Europe: The Nazi Master Plan: (August 7, 1945)

Herbert Marcuse

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter discusses Nazi Germany's comprehensive plan for aggression, conquest, and domination in Europe and beyond. It first explains the role of the National Socialist German Workers' Party ... More

This chapter discusses Nazi Germany's comprehensive plan for aggression, conquest, and domination in Europe and beyond. It first explains the role of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), or Nazi Party, in the Nazi plan for domination before analyzing the stages in which the plan would be executed: to overthrow the Weimar Republic, which was founded on parliamentary democracy, and to fight for the establishment of a Nazi dictatorship led by Adolf Hitler; to eliminate all opposition and establish totalitarian control over Germany; rearmament and preparation for the war of aggression. The chapter also considers the concepts of Lebensraum and Grossraumordnung on which the Nazi occupation policy was based and concludes with an assessment of the unlawful elements of the policy.Less

Dissolution of the Nazi Party and its Affiliated Organizations: (July 22, 1944)

Herbert Marcuse

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter proposes the dissolution of the Nazi Party and its affiliated organizations. The reports suggests When the Allies march into Nazi Germany, they will probably find the regime in a state ... More

This chapter proposes the dissolution of the Nazi Party and its affiliated organizations. The reports suggests When the Allies march into Nazi Germany, they will probably find the regime in a state of disintegration. Some of the agencies and institutions of Nazism may still be functioning, but the key positions of political control and terror will have been abandoned. The occupying authorities are committed not only to safeguarding the security of the Allied forces and to maintaining public law and order, but also to the destruction of Nazism. Nazism can be eliminated only through an internal political movement in Germany. The first step in this undertaking would be the dissolution of the National Socialist Party as well as its affiliate and controlled organizations, and the removal and apprehension of all officials who participated in the formulation of policy or had considerable responsibility in carrying it out.Less

German Social Stratification: (November 26, 1943)

Herbert Marcuse

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter discusses social stratification in Nazi Germany. Since the abolition of all popular representation, the political decisions in Germany were reached by compromises between the leadership ... More

This chapter discusses social stratification in Nazi Germany. Since the abolition of all popular representation, the political decisions in Germany were reached by compromises between the leadership of the Nazi Party, the Army, the ministerial bureaucracy, and the representatives of certain powerful business groups. The economic groups usually kept in the background, although their voice in the fundamental decisions of policy-making was just as strong as, and perhaps even stronger than, that of the government (state and Party). The chapter provides an overview of five ruling groups in Nazi Germany: the leadership of the Nazi Party and affiliated organizations; the top strata of the governmental and political bureaucracy; the High Command of the Armed Forces and its representatives; the leadership of big business; and the landed aristocracy. It also looks at the ruled social groups, which include artisans, civil servants, and peasants.Less

Leadership Principle and Criminal Responsibility: (July 18, 1945)

Otto Kircheimer

John Herz (ed.)

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter discusses the leadership principle and criminal responsibility underlying the Nazi hierarchical organization. The report explains that according to Nazi theory, Nazi Germany's political ... More

This chapter discusses the leadership principle and criminal responsibility underlying the Nazi hierarchical organization. The report explains that according to Nazi theory, Nazi Germany's political community—built upon three basic pillars consisting of the Nazi Party, the state machine, and the military—is organized as an “order of leadership.” At the top of the structure was Adolf Hitler as Führer, but a great range of discretionary power was exercised by regional “sub-leaders” who were considered collaborators in the Nazi scheme. By drawing an analogy to the Nazi theory of leadership, a theory of incrimination in connection with war crimes might be developed which could be applied to fit the special circumstances arising under the Nazi hierarchy, and which might be much more comprehensible to an incriminated member of the Nazi Party or state than any technical established rule of law which might otherwise be followed.Less

The Social and Political Effects of Air Raids on the German People: A Preliminary Survey: (June 9, 1944)

Franz Neumann

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter examines the social and political effects of air raids on German morale during World War II. The strategic aerial bombing of Nazi Germany had increased to such an extent during the last ... More

This chapter examines the social and political effects of air raids on German morale during World War II. The strategic aerial bombing of Nazi Germany had increased to such an extent during the last twelve months that approximately 65,000 people were, at tbe time of the report, bombed out of their homes each week. The number of unusable destroyed houses in April 1944 totaled 1,600,000 in the Reich and the protected areas. A large number of the great industrial centers of Germany, such as Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, the Ruhr district, Rostock, Hannover, Leipzig, Mannheim-Ludwigshafen, Stuttgart, Brunswick, Kassel, and Wiener-Neustadt had been severely damaged. The chapter considers the impact of the bombings on Germany's local defense program, the emergency relief measures implemented after the raids, problems of evacuation, the Nazi Party's propaganda reply to the raids, and how the bombings affected the German people, including the middle classes and workers.Less

The Attempt on Hitler’s Life and its Consequences: (July 27, 1944)

Franz Neumann

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter examines the political implications of the latest attempt on Adolf Hitler's life in relation to German morale at the time of the report. It first considers some of the principles for the ... More

This chapter examines the political implications of the latest attempt on Adolf Hitler's life in relation to German morale at the time of the report. It first considers some of the principles for the evaluation of German morale: for example, the ruling group in Nazi Germany was made up of four segments: Nazi Party hierarchy, Armed Forces leadership, industrial and financial leaders, and high civil servants. In addition, in the course of World War II, the political power of the industrial leadership and of the civil servants had diminished to such a degree that they could assert themselves only by attempting to influence either Party or Army. The chapter proceeds by linking the timing of the attempt on Hitler's life to the impending transfer of the Home Army to Heinrich Himmler. It also analyzes the political character of the group behind the conspiracy to kill Hitler before concluding with a discussion of the political consequences of the failed assassination attempt.Less

Florentine: Unrepentant Political Nazi

Kristen Renwick Monroe

in Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice

This chapter tells the story of Florentine, widow of Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, one of the two top Dutch Nazis during the Hitler period. Florentine's husband served as the Dutch plenipotentiary to ... More

This chapter tells the story of Florentine, widow of Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, one of the two top Dutch Nazis during the Hitler period. Florentine's husband served as the Dutch plenipotentiary to the League of Nations during the 1930s and as head of the Dutch National Bank during World War II. Offered the chance to be secreted to South America after the war by the Nazi leadership, Florentine and her husband elected to stay in Holland to “tell people the truth” about the war. Florentine remained an unrepentant Nazi until her death in 2007, traveling as much as her health permitted to speak in favor of the Nazi cause. She was extremely proud of her job as former leader of the Dutch Nazi Youth Movement for Women and was devoted to the memory of her husband.Less

Anti-Semitism: Spearhead of Universal Teror: (May 18, 1943)

Franz Neumann

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter examines the function of anti-Semitism within the framework of the Nazi system. Anti-Semitism had been the most constant single ideology of the Nazi Party, but its understanding was ... More

This chapter examines the function of anti-Semitism within the framework of the Nazi system. Anti-Semitism had been the most constant single ideology of the Nazi Party, but its understanding was impaired by the widely accepted scapegoat theory according to which the Jews were used as scapegoats for all evils of society. The slaughter or the expulsion of the scapegoat, however, marks in mythology the end of a process, while the persecution of the Jews, as practiced by National Socialists, was only the beginning of more horrible things to come. While anti-Semitism had thus been a constant and consistent policy of National Socialism, its manifestations changed considerably from 1933 to 1943. The chapter discusses these changes in anti-Semitic policies in order to gain insights not so much into the fate of the Jews but rather into the structure of the Nazi system.Less

Communism and Fascism

Marc Mulholland

in Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear: From Absolutism to Neo-Conservatism

In Weimar Germany, parliamentary democracy stabilized, but at the cost of entrenching the power of the reactionary ‘permanent state’ (army, most police forces, judiciary, most civil servants). ... More

In Weimar Germany, parliamentary democracy stabilized, but at the cost of entrenching the power of the reactionary ‘permanent state’ (army, most police forces, judiciary, most civil servants). Constitutionalism in Italy, wracked by bourgeois / socialist conflict, collapsed into Fascism. In Soviet Russia, the prostration of the proletariat and elimination of the bourgeoisie created a vacuum filled by the Leviathan state. Elsewhere, the Red challenge was beaten back, but bourgeois confidence in democracy was left diminished. The economic Slump from 1929 put the very future of capitalism into question, radicalising Fascism in Italy and preparing the way for a an anti-Semitic Nazi take-over in Germany. Constitutionalism reached a low ebb.Less

Fritz: Nazi Propagandist

Kristen Renwick Monroe

in Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice

This chapter showcases a Dutch collaborator named Fritz. Fritz shared many of Tony's prewar conservative opinions in favor of the monarchy and traditional Dutch values, although he was of ... More

This chapter showcases a Dutch collaborator named Fritz. Fritz shared many of Tony's prewar conservative opinions in favor of the monarchy and traditional Dutch values, although he was of working-class origins, unlike Tony and Beatrix, who were Dutch bourgeoisie. But unlike Beatrix or Tony, Fritz joined the Nazi Party, wrote propaganda for the Nazi cause, and married the daughter of a German Nazi. When he was interviewed in 1992, Fritz indicated he was appalled at what he later learned about Nazi treatment of Jews but that he still believed in many of the goals of the National Socialist movement and felt that Hitler had betrayed the movement. Fritz is thus classified as a disillusioned Nazi supporter who retains his faith in much of National Socialism, and this chapter is presented as illustrative of the psychology of those who once supported the Nazi regime but who were disillusioned after the war.Less

Weimar in the Weimar Republic: 1918 to 1933

Michael H. Kater

in Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present

This chapter focuses on Weimar as the seat of the Weimar Republic's provisional national assembly, and how the National Socialists under Adolf Hitler entrenched themselves in the city and all of ... More

This chapter focuses on Weimar as the seat of the Weimar Republic's provisional national assembly, and how the National Socialists under Adolf Hitler entrenched themselves in the city and all of Thuringia. It begins by considering the establishment of the Society of Friends of the Nietzsche Archive in honor of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, followed by a discussion of Weimar's right-wing culture featuring such personalities as Adolf Bartels, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, and Hans F. K. Günther. It then looks at how Hitler and his Nazi Party established their political power throughout Weimar. It also examines how the Thuringian elections held in December 1929 enabled the National Socialists to install a Nazi-controlled government in Germany at the regional level.Less

Speer’s Appointment as Dictator of the German Economy: (September 13,1943)

Franz Neumann and Paul Sweezy

in Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort

This chapter focuses on the appointment of Albert Speer as dictator of the German economy and the Reich Minister of Economics Walther Funk as a member of the Central Planning Board. Both appointments ... More

This chapter focuses on the appointment of Albert Speer as dictator of the German economy and the Reich Minister of Economics Walther Funk as a member of the Central Planning Board. Both appointments were made by Adolf Hitler as part of a decree he issued on September 2, 1943, which put the Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions in control of total German production for the duration of the war, while the Reich Minister of Economics was to be responsible for the general economic policy, among other functions. The chapter first provides a background on the careers of Funk and Speer before discussing the relative position of Funk, Speer, Hermann Göring, and certain commissioners in the German war economy. It also considers the organizational meaning of Hitler's decree, along with the possibility that the new measure will deepen the antagonism between industry and the Nazi Party.Less

National Socialists and Art: Becoming the Perpetrator

Paul B. Jaskot

in The Nazi Perpetrator: Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right

This chapter presents an overview of German political history that describes the characteristics of the Nazi perpetrators. It addresses the question: what range of actions did postwar audiences label ... More

This chapter presents an overview of German political history that describes the characteristics of the Nazi perpetrators. It addresses the question: what range of actions did postwar audiences label as criminal in order to define the category of the perpetrator? An analysis of the Nazi Party to ground the particularities and complexities of that political institution is given. Nazi leaders found the work of renowned art historian Heinrich Wölfflin useful in surprising ways. In his influential book Principles of Art History (1915), he advocated a schematic comparative study of formal typologies to understand fundamental distinctions between European Renaissance and Baroque art. By focusing on culture not as an ideological cipher but as an intellectual work of strategic use, this chapter argues that the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) developed a series of different relationships to art that helped constitute a typology of the perpetrator. It also explores how the strategic use of cultural policy for racism came to define aspects of criminal behavior recognized by postwar audiences.Less

Lucifer’s Court: Ario-Germanic Paganism, Indo-Aryan Spirituality, and the Nazi Search for Alternative Religions

Eric Kurlander

in Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich

This chapter explores the Nazis' interest in Germanic paganism, witchcraft, Luciferianism, and Eastern spirituality in their attempt to find a suitable Ario-Germanic alternative to Christianity. The ... More

This chapter explores the Nazis' interest in Germanic paganism, witchcraft, Luciferianism, and Eastern spirituality in their attempt to find a suitable Ario-Germanic alternative to Christianity. The Third Reich embraced a range of pagan, esoteric, and Indo-Aryan religious doctrines that buttressed its racial, political, and ideological goals. That is why Nazism posed a different threat to Christianity than secular liberalism or atheist Marxism. Nazi religiosity was a ‘fluid and incoherent thing which expresses itself in several different forms’. Part of a shared supernatural imaginary, these various religious strains were to some extent embraced and exploited by the Third Reich in the process of building spiritual consensus across a diverse Nazi Party and an even more eclectic German population.Less

Locating Germanness, Locating the Colonial: Competing Organizations and Visions of Empire

Willeke Sandler

in Empire in the Heimat: Colonialism and Public Culture in the Third Reich

Many colonialists had believed that the Nazi regime established in 1933 would ease cooperation between colonialists and the Nazi Party, but conflicts between colonialists and Nazi officials continued ... More

Many colonialists had believed that the Nazi regime established in 1933 would ease cooperation between colonialists and the Nazi Party, but conflicts between colonialists and Nazi officials continued over the next decade. This chapter examines these continuing tensions through two categories: organizational rivalry and ideological competition. Organizations such as the NS-Frauenschaft, the Hitler Youth, the Auslands-Organisation, and the Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland competed with colonialists for access to sectors of German society and for control over discussions about Auslandsdeutschen (Germans beyond Germany’s borders). Colonialists also had to assert the relationship between their focus on Africa and the Nazis’ focus on Eastern Europe as a territorial goal. These competitions at times hindered colonialists’ publicity work, yet also brought discussions of the former overseas colonies into broader sectors of society through these other organizations.Less

Gleichschaltung and the Beginnings of a Mass Movement, 1933–1935

Willeke Sandler

in Empire in the Heimat: Colonialism and Public Culture in the Third Reich

This chapter examines colonialists’ response to the Nazi takeover. Many saw the new Third Reich as fertile ground both ideologically and organizationally, and quickly adapted to their new reality. ... More

This chapter examines colonialists’ response to the Nazi takeover. Many saw the new Third Reich as fertile ground both ideologically and organizationally, and quickly adapted to their new reality. For these colonialists, the Nazi Party’s ostensible support for overseas colonialism, expressed through the 1920 Party Program, encouraged their belief that the Third Reich would also bring the reclamation of the overseas empire. In order to ensure public support for this goal and facing the Nazi regime’s drive to coordinate society through Gleichschaltung, the colonialist organizations underwent Selbstgleichschaltung (self-coordination) in 1933 and created the Reichskolonialbund as their new umbrella organization.. Between 1933 and 1935, German colonialists also established the organizational structure and goal of a mass movement (Volksbewegung) that would continue throughout the Third Reich.Less

Political History and Postwar German Art

Paul B. Jaskot

in The Nazi Perpetrator: Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right

This introductory chapter summarizes the argument concerning the variable political receptions of the criminal past that occurred in the Federal Republic since 1945, and addresses the question: in an ... More

This introductory chapter summarizes the argument concerning the variable political receptions of the criminal past that occurred in the Federal Republic since 1945, and addresses the question: in an era that sought so fervently to determine who was to blame for the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime, why does the public exhibition of an artist so well connected with the Nazi past go unremarked? It recounts the complicated and variable relationship of Franz Schönhuber to the Nazis. Schönhuber worked his way through the Nazi youth organizations, became a party member in 1941, and willingly enlisted in the Waffen-SS. During the war he helped train French Waffen-SS volunteers for a division called “Charlemagne.” The chapter also presents the background for the changing status of the Nazi perpetrator.Less