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Behemoth and Beyond

Jens Meierhenrich

in The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat: An Ethnography of Nazi Law

Few issues in the historiography of the “Third Reich” have provoked as much acrimony in the academy as the debate over the nature of the Nazi state. To enable readers to appreciate Fraenkel’s ... More

Few issues in the historiography of the “Third Reich” have provoked as much acrimony in the academy as the debate over the nature of the Nazi state. To enable readers to appreciate Fraenkel’s contribution to this debate, this chapter provides a critical review of contending theories of the Nazi state, with particular reference to Franz Neumann’s Behemoth, first published in 1942, and in an enlarged edition in 1944, which has inspired much scholarship on the racial state. The rise of Behemoth corresponded directly with the decline of The Dual State in the final war and early postwar years. Neumann’s Behemoth, which has never gone out of print, exemplifies major shortcomings—theoretical, empirical, methodological—in early studies of Nazi rule. I argue that it gave rise in the 1950s and 1960s to an intellectual trajectory in scholarship on the Third Reich that has done a fair amount to obscure—rather than illuminate—the logic of Nazi dictatorship, including law’s role in it.Less

Introduction: An Old Legend and a New Legacy

in The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich

This chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is the “Faustian bargain” made by biomedical professionals in Germany with the officials of the Nazi state. The book examines why and how this ... More

This chapter discusses the theme of this book, which is the “Faustian bargain” made by biomedical professionals in Germany with the officials of the Nazi state. The book examines why and how this deal was negotiated and explores its ethical and professional consequences for the biomedical practitioners, as well as its political ramifications for the institutionalization of Nazi racial policies. It also shows how important members of the German human genetics community functioned not only during the peak genocidal years of the regime, but also within the social, economic, and political contexts of the early years of the Third Reich.Less

Introduction: Toward a Moral History of the Wehrmacht in the War of Extermination

David A. Harrisville

in The Virtuous Wehrmacht: Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Eastern Front, 1941-1944

This chapter seeks to understand the self-conception of the German soldier and the nature of his institution through the lens of moral history. It approaches the story of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern ... More

This chapter seeks to understand the self-conception of the German soldier and the nature of his institution through the lens of moral history. It approaches the story of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front from a novel angle. Rather than addressing why soldiers fought or what crimes they committed—important questions that have already been the subject of much scholarly attention—the chapter investigates how value systems within the German Army came to be deployed to hinder or advance Nazi goals and what the men who participated in the Vernichtungskrieg thought about who they were and what they were doing. As the chapter emphasizes, such an approach helps to explain how committed Nazis and non-Nazis alike came to willingly accept their part in the crimes of the Third Reich, now that these have been extensively uncovered. Beyond the Wehrmacht itself, the chapter illuminates the relationship between ideology, morality, and identity in the Third Reich, providing insight into how the Nazi state appropriated existing value systems and how Germans oriented their preexisting beliefs toward Nazi goals. It presents a new interpretation of the origins of the Wehrmacht myth that proved so influential in shaping the country's collective memory and serves as a useful case study in how perpetrators violate moral boundaries.Less

Breaking with the Past: Race, Gender, and Opera after 1945

Kira Thurman

in Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms

This chapter explains the interplay of race, gender, and opera after 1945. Narratives of post-war West German and Austrian cultural life frequently show Anglo-American actors as the primary agents of ... More

This chapter explains the interplay of race, gender, and opera after 1945. Narratives of post-war West German and Austrian cultural life frequently show Anglo-American actors as the primary agents of change. Following the Holocaust and the Nazi racial state, the Allied powers pushed policies to drastically alter the function of German musical culture. Longstanding notions of Blackness shaped the production and reception of operas featuring Black singers in West Germany and Austria. The chapter references Annabelle Bernard, the first Black woman to be part of a German ensemble, who indicated the lack of opportunity in America made her stay in Europe to sing.Less

Mobilizing the National Community: Do You Want Total War?

Alexandra Lohse

in Prevail until the Bitter End: Germans in the Waning Years of World War II

This chapter discusses how the early “totalizing measures” amplified popular resentments of the failures and corruptions of the Nazi state and party apparatus. It treats the Sport Palace rally as a ... More

This chapter discusses how the early “totalizing measures” amplified popular resentments of the failures and corruptions of the Nazi state and party apparatus. It treats the Sport Palace rally as a launching point into a new phase of German mobilization that grew out of the German defeat at Stalingrad and the Allied demand for “total” or “unconditional surrender” after the Casablanca Conference of January 1943. The chapter posits that “total war” as presented by Joseph Goebbels entailed a pact symbolically forged between leadership and people at a crossroads. The chapter then shifts to answer the following questions: What did the pact entail, and what did it look like to those among the national community who entered it? What did they expect to contribute, and what did they expect to receive in return? Focusing on “total war” as a political program, the chapter unfolds the most prominent ideas about total mobilization at the very moment that Germans first embarked on this new chapter in the war. It also considers which policies met with popular support and which aggravated long-standing tensions across the many fault lines in German wartime society.Less

“A Swissman in the Middle of Germany”: Bonn, 1930‒5

Christiane Tietz

in Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict

In the summer semester of 1930, Barth moved to Bonn. He was soon drawn into a conflict with German nationalists about the German pacifist and theologian Günther Dehn, whom Barth defended. A few ... More

In the summer semester of 1930, Barth moved to Bonn. He was soon drawn into a conflict with German nationalists about the German pacifist and theologian Günther Dehn, whom Barth defended. A few months after Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor in 1933, Barth wrote Theological Existence Today!, declaring that church and theology constitute a boundary for every state, even a totalitarian one. At the same time, Barth’s domestic situation grew more difficult, leading him to consider divorce. In 1934 Barth co-authored the Barmen Theological Declaration of the Confessing Church. Barth didn’t conform with even minor regulations at the university and refused to swear the loyalty oath to Hitler without an addendum. This led to Barth’s suspension as professor, followed by a disciplinary criminal process, in which Barth protested that Hitler was treated as a second God. The process led to Barth’s compulsory retirement in 1935.Less