HIST 96.22 Nazism: Culture, Society, War

This edition of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Politische Ideale (1915) reveals the historical significance of Chamberlain in German conservative political philosophy. Contrasting the vital nationalistic state with the sterile commercialism of liberal democracies, moral freedom with the unruly selfishness of democratic parties, and the decaying culture of the Anglo-Saxon peoples with the relatively pure Teutonic, Chamberlain evokes in this work the principal elements of a genuinely conservative state.

For the first time in 65 years, a modern, easy to understand, truly complete, accurate, and uncensored edition of "Mein Kampf" has been released which reveals more than any past translation.

The first complete and annotated edition of the book Hitler dictated just before his rise to power. Contains startling, revealing ideas that became his programme once in power but that he didn't want publicised. New here is the much broader, 'open' vision Hitler gave of his foreign policy views and the fact that all were oriented toward war and aggression. Perhaps the most unnerving vision is the terrifying future Hitler offered, one of continuous warfare, with new wars being carried out in a kind of chain-reaction until the final inevitable clash with the United States. These statements are wrapped in the trademark rhetoric and with many references to people and events, which are fully explained by Dr Weinberg's annotations. An essential document, unavailable until now, for a deeper understanding of the Nazi period and its dismal list of horrors.

This is a new edition of a major document from World War II with additional, previously unavailable texts assembled from the stenographic record of Hitler's informal conversations ordered by Martin Bormann. These texts remain the classic collection of Hitler's nighttime monologues with his entourage, covering mostly nonmilitary subjects and long-range plans. Hitler lets his thoughts wander, never failing to provide an opinion on every subject. Additional documents from various archives make this the most complete English-language edition in print.

Decades after the Holocaust, many assume that the churches in Germany resisted the Nazi regime. In fact, resistance was exceptional.The Deutsche Christen, or "German Christians," a movement within German Protestantism, integrated Nazi ideology, nationalism, and Christian faith. Marrying religious anti-Judaism to the Nazis' racial antisemitism, they aimed to remove everything Jewish from Christianity.For the first time in English, Mary M. Solberg presents a selection of "German Christian" documents. Her introduction sets the historical context. Includes responses critical of the German Christians by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production under Hitler, the man who had kept Germany armed and the war machine running even after Hitler's mystique had faded, takes a brutally honest look at his role in the war effort, giving readers a complete view of the inside of the Nazi state. Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production under Hitler, the man who had kept Germany armed and the war machine running even after Hitler's mystique had faded, takes a brutally honest look at his role in the war effort, giving readers a complete view of the inside of the Nazi state.

The Nuremberg Interviewsreveals the chilling innermost thoughts of the former Nazi officials under indictment at the famous postwar trial. The architects of one of history’s greatest atrocities speak out about their lives, their careers in the Nazi Party, and their views on the Holocaust. Their reflections are recorded in a set of interviews conducted by a U.S. Army psychiatrist. Dr. Leon Goldensohn was entrusted with monitoring the mental health of the two dozen German leaders charged with carrying out genocide, as well as that of many of the defense and prosecution witnesses. These recorded conversations have gone largely unexamined for more than fifty years. Now, Robert Gellately–one of the premier historians of Nazi Germany–has transcribed, edited, and annotated the interviews, and makes them available to the public for the first time in this volume. Here are interviews with the highest-ranking Nazi officials in the Nuremberg jails, including Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Here, too, are interviews with the lesser-known officials who were, nonetheless, essential to the workings of the Third Reich. Goldensohn was a particularly astute interviewer, his training as a psychiatrist leading him to probe the motives, the rationales, and the skewing of morality that allowed these men to enact an unfathomable evil. Candid and often shockingly truthful, these interviews are deeply disturbing in their illumination of an ideology gone mad. Each interview is annotated with biographical information that places the man and his actions in their historical context. These interviews are a profoundly important addition to our understanding of the Nazi mind and mission.

The military conferences that Hitler had twice daily with his staff, where he directed the war, were transcribed by stenographers from 1942 to 1945 in the bunker. These authentic documents are the only record kept by the Germans of their highest military decisions at the critical moment when the war turned against them.

Between 1942 and 1945, MI-19, a division of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, created a number of Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres in and around London. The most important of these centers was at Trent Park, in North London. Sophisticated tapping equipment was installed, and secret gramophone recordings were made of conversations between German general staff officers. In these transcripts, the officers reflect on how they thought the war was progressing, and the direction of German politics and strategy. The officers discussed the July Plot of 1944, the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, collaboration with the enemy, and their experience of German war crimes. The editor has written biographies of all of the officers who appear in the transcripts, and has meticulously researched the validity of their assertions. Tapping Hitler's Generals also tells the extraordinary background and details of the surveillance operation. One tactic for acquiring information involved mixing up Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe officers in order to elicit more detailed explanations of events and technologies. German stool pigeons were used to stir up debate, and a bogus welfare officer named Lord Aberfeldy acted as an undercover interpreter.REVIEWS "An outstanding work."-Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "A goldmine of information about what the German High Command privately thought of the war, Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and each other. . . . Attempts to suggest that genocide was solely the responsibility of the SS and Nazi fanatics, and not widespread across the whole Wehrmacht, completely collapse before the evidence of these recordings."--The Daily Mail (London)

While the "Valkyrie" plot by Nazi officers to kill Adolf Hitler is the best known instance of German opposition to his dictatorship, there were many other significant acts of resistance. Behind Valkyrie collects documents, letters, and testimonies of Germans who fought Hitler from within, making many of them available in their entirety and in English for the first time.

The White Rose tells the story of Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, who in 1942 led a small underground organization of German students and professors to oppose the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazi Party. They named their group the White Rose, and they distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime. Sophie, Hans, and a third student were caught and executed. Written by Inge Scholl (Han's and Sophie's sister), The White Rose features letters, diary excerpts, photographs of Hans and Sophie, transcriptions of the leaflets, and accounts of the trial and execution. This is a gripping account of courage and morality. CONTRIBUTORS: Dorthe Solle.

Reluctant Accomplice is a volume of the wartime letters of Dr. Konrad Jarausch, a German high-school teacher of religion and history who served in a reserve battalion of Hitler's army in Poland and Russia, where he died of typhoid in 1942. He wrote most of these letters to his wife, Elisabeth. His son, acclaimed German historian Konrad H. Jarausch, brings them together here to tell the gripping story of a patriotic soldier of the Third Reich who, through witnessing its atrocities in the East, begins to doubt the war's moral legitimacy. These letters grow increasingly critical, and their vivid descriptions of the mass deaths of Russian POWs are chilling. They reveal the inner conflicts of ordinary Germans who became reluctant accomplices in Hitler's merciless war of annihilation, yet sometimes managed to discover a shared humanity with its suffering victims, a bond that could transcend race, nationalism, and the enmity of war. Reluctant Accomplice is also the powerful story of the son, who for decades refused to come to grips with these letters because he abhorred his father's nationalist politics. Only now, late in his life, is he able to cope with their contents--and he is by no means alone. This book provides rare insight into the so-called children of the war, an entire generation of postwar Germans who grew up resenting their past, but who today must finally face the painful legacy of their parents' complicity in National Socialism.

As a 15-year-old boy I fought briefly in a war. My fight was neither noble nor heroic. I saw the horrors that no 15-year-old boy should ever see. I came into war purely by happenstance, and survived it purely by luck.Gerhardt B. Thamm grew up on his grandfather's farm in Lower Silesia, the hinterlands of Germany. In early 1945 this land, near the Czechoslovakian and Polish borders, became a battleground. The Soviets captured Lower Silesia in February, and Thamm, like many of his Hitler Youth high school classmates, was conscripted to fight on the Eastern Front until the last few days of World War II, experiencing firsthand fearsome barbarity and atrocity. Thamm's family was deported from Silesia in 1946 to West Germany. Gerhardt Thamm arrived in the United States in 1948. The 17-year-old Thamm joined the U.S. Army the same year and served more than 20 years as an enlisted man.Maybe, just maybe, I fought in this war to escape the barbarity. Maybe I wrote this book to still the memories.

Not all Germans acquiesced to the power and terror of Hitler and the Third Reich in WWII Germany, and not all Protestants were, as Hitler once remarked to his confidants, "insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them." A few stood up because they believed their faith demanded it. The Resistance was, at times, a family action. Gisela Harnisch was the teenage daughter of Pastor Wilhelm Harnisch, an active member with those who opposed Hitler's state church.
This is the story, told by Gisela, as she matured into womanhood and struggled with her family to do what was right rather than what was safe. This was a family who knew what it was in the 1930s and 1940s to be out of step in Germany.
"This is a well-written and haunting memoir that conveys how Nazism affected the personal lives of those who opposed it. A fascinating figure, Pastor Wilhelm Harnisch was a stubborn opponent of the Nazi regime and its church allies and suffered the consequences of that throughout his ministry. Gisela Dewees's account of her father's actions and her own life gives the human, personal side of this important period of history." (Victoria Barnett, Coeditor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition.

What were the women of Germany doing during the Third Reich? What were they thinking? And what do they have to say a half century later? In Frauen we hear their voices - most for the first time. Alison Owings interviewed and here records the words of twenty-nine German women who were there: Working for the Resistance. Joining the Nazi Party. Outsmarting the Gestapo. Disliking a Jewish neighbor. Hiding a Jewish friend. Witnessing Kristallnacht. Witnessing the firebombing of Dresden. Shooting at Allied planes. Welcoming Allied troops. Being a prisoner. And being a guard. The women recall their own and others' enthusiasm, doubt, fear, fury, cowardice, guilt, and anguish. Alison Owings, in her pursuit of such memories, was invited into the homes of these women. Because she is neither Jewish nor German, and because she speaks fluent colloquial German, many of the women she interviewed felt comfortable enough with her to unlock the past. What they have to say will surprise Americans, just as it surprised the women themselves. Not since Marcel Ophuls's controversial film The Sorrow and the Pity have we been on such intimate terms with the enemy. In this case, the story is that of the women, those who did not make policy but who lived with its effects and witnessed its results. What they did and did not do is not just a reflection on them and their country - it also leads us to question what actions we might have taken in their place. The interviews do not allow for easy, smug answers.

In plain eloquence, the woman who married Oskar Schindler tells the true story of their life together, what they did to save the Jews in their factories, and what led to "Schindler's list." It soon became clear that her marriage would have both its passions and its betrayals. Yet Emilie stayed with Oskar through his growing involvement with the Nazis, working for counterintelligence with him. She first, then he later, came to realize the costs of the Nazi takeover and became witnesses to its terrors. Their inward allegiance changed even as they needed to maintain patriotic appearances and close affiliations with the Nazis in power.
Through their work together at their two factories, saving the Jews became paramount for the Schindlers. Emilie nursed the Jewish factory workers when they fell ill, often saving their lives. She risked imprisonment or worse for her activities in the black market to feed them. Her stubbornness kept her fighting for food, even daring to ask a wealthy mill owner to give them grain to feed her starving workers. Where Light and Shadow Meet chronicles the Schindlers' flight after the war, the loss of almost all their possessions, and their eventual emigration to Argentina. There they settled on a farm, but barely scraped together an existence. Oskar returned to Germany, leaving Emilie to manage on her own.
This is the story of one woman's daily acts of bravery during Hitler's reign and why it mattered. It is also the story of a marriage and of survival. Finally, it is the story of Emilie's strength in continuing on one day at a time.

A memoir of life in wartime Germany.

This book is an important work in Holocaust literature and was originally published in Poland in 1967. Covering the years 1939-1945, it is the author's account of her experience growing up in the Warsaw ghetto and her eventual deportation to, imprisonment in, and survival of the Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Neustadt-Glewe camps. Since the old, the weak, and children were summarily executed by the Nazis in these camps, Mrs Birenbaum's survival and coming of age is all the more remarkable. Her story is told with simplicity and clarity and the new edition contains revisions made by the author to the original English translation, and is expanded with a new epilogue and postscripts that bring the story up to date and complete the circle of Mrs Birenbaum's experiences.

In early 1939, after Kristallnacht, young Inge Joseph's family in Germany is broken apart, and her desperate mother sends her alone to Brussels to live with wealthy relatives. But she soon finds herself one of a hundred Jewish children fleeing for their lives following Hitler's invasions of Belgium and France. For a time, in 1941 and 1942, it seems as if Inge and the others have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, as they find shelter through the Swiss Red Cross in an idyllic fifteenth-century French chateau. Inge even finds love there. But the rumors and horrors of the Holocaust are never far away, and eventually French gendarmes surprise the children, taking them from their protectors to a nearby transit camp. In their desperate attempts to escape, Inge and her boyfriend face unexpected life-and-death decisions - wrenching decisions that will haunt Inge for the rest of her life. manuscript, found after her death; David Gumpert has also drawn from Inge's personal letters, from the recollections of friends, relatives, and people who were with her in Europe, and from his own close relationship with his aunt. One of the most dramatic stories of Christian rescue of Jewish children during the Holocaust, Inge is at the same time a totally frank account of the life and feelings of a teenage girl struggling to survive the Holocaust on her own - and of how the effects of that experience reverberated through her life and on into the lives of her descendants. No matter how or why one reads it, Inge is a story of survival not soon to be forgotten.

An account of a woman who spent her childhood in the shadow of Hitler's famous alpine retreat, otherwise known as The Eagle's Nest, describes her family's witness to Third Reich activities, the impact of Aryan values on their belief systems, and her membership in the Hitler Youth.

While we now have a great number of testimonials to the horrors of the Holocaust from survivors of that dark episode of twentieth-century history, rare are the accounts of what growing up in Nazi Germany was like for people who were reared to think of Adolf Hitler as the savior of his country, and rarer still are accounts written from a female perspective. Ursula Mahlendorf, born to a middle-class family in 1929, at the start of the Great Depression, was the daughter of a man who was a member of the SS at the time of his early death in 1935. For a long while during her childhood she was a true believer in Nazism—and a leader in the Hitler Youth herself. This is her vivid and unflinchingly honest account of her indoctrination into Nazism and of her gradual awakening to all the damage that Nazism had done to her country. It reveals why Nazism initially appealed to people from her station in life and how Nazi ideology was inculcated into young people. The book recounts the increasing hardships of life under Nazism as the war progressed and the chaos and turmoil that followed Germany’s defeat. In the first part of this absorbing narrative, we see the young Ursula as she becomes an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth and then goes on to a Nazi teacher-training school at fifteen. In the second part, which traces her growing disillusionment with and anger at the Nazi leadership, we follow her story as she flees from the Russian army’s advance in the spring of 1945, works for a time in a hospital caring for the wounded, returns to Silesia when it is under Polish administration, and finally is evacuated to the West, where she begins a new life and pursues her dream of becoming a teacher. In a moving Epilogue, Mahlendorf discloses how she learned to accept and cope emotionally with the shame that haunted her from her childhood allegiance to Nazism and the self-doubts it generated.

With skill, sensitivity, and spirit, Eyes are Watching, Ears are Listening tells the story of Eycke Strickland's unusual childhood in the Third Reich. In beautiful prose, the author relates fascinating memories of a large, loving, and unconventional family in pre-war Germany and in war-time (German-annexed) Poland. Strickland's evocative anecdotes and candid commentary paint a richly-layered portrait of family ties and tensions, on the one hand, and of childhood adventures and anxieties, on the other. Simultaneously, the book contributes to our understanding of life and death under National Socialism. From the viewpoint of a young, but perceptive, daughter in an anti-Nazi family, we learn about relations between Germans and Jews, Germans and Poles, and ordinary Germans and Nazi officials in a Polish town located close to Auschwitz. Above all, we are introduced to a courageous family that resisted a criminal regime and survived total war. Strickland's father, Karl Laabs, rescued many Jews from deportation to Auschwitz. Her mother's civil treatment of Poles led to repeated threats from Nazi stalwarts. Their resilient children helped the family endure a terrible time. This poignant, informative memoir deserves a wide readership. -Donna Harsch, Ph.D., author of German Social Democracy and The Rise of Nazism, and Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic Republic.

The publication of Victor Klemperer's secret diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. "In its cool, lucid style and power of observation," said The New York Times, "it is the best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich." I Will Bear Witness is a work of literature as well as a revelation of the day-by-day horror of the Nazi years.          A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany.          What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?          This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities.          Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end." When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life of tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."          This book covers the years from 1933 to 1941. Volume Two, from 1941 to 1945, will be published in 1999.

That Gad Beck, a Jew in the Berlin of Nazi Germany, lived through the Holocaust at all is surprising. The fact that he lived it as a homosexual Jew who spent the entire war funnelling food, money and clothing to hidden Jews and helping smuggle others out of the country is amazing.

When the Germans invaded Poland, Ruth Altbeker Cyprys, a young Jewish woman, was practicing as a lawyer in Warsaw. By September 1942, she knew the fate awaiting those being herded onto trains bound for Treblinka. Her response was to plan a daring escape with her small child.

"European culture may have failed the human race during the crucial Holocaust years, but it is vindicated in this memoir in the person of the young Judith Magyar." -- Freema Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review

In the summer of 1942, when Jews throughout France were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps, twelve-year-old Simon Jeruchim, his older sister, and his younger brother were sent into hiding in separate foster homes around the countryside of Normandy. Their parents, unbeknownst to the children, were arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where they perished. Thus the young refugees avoided arrest, but they were still not safe from the ravages of the war. Staying alive meant affecting a gentile identity, even going to Mass on Sundays. Living conditions were harsh, and the farm work was heavy and difficult; but even worse was the loneliness, isolation, uncertainty, and fear that dogged young Simon day and night. After the war Simon was reunited with his siblings. They were placed in a series of homes for Jewish children, and in 1949 they were sent to begin new lives in America. Here is a story of the courage of children and compassion of strangers, and a view of the barely comprehensible events of war from the vantage point of shattered innocence. Hidden in France is, above all, a story of survival and perseverance against all odds. Book jacket.

"In this moving memoir, a young Polish Jew chronicles his life under the Nazis. In the vain hope of protecting himself and his family, Calel Perechodnik makes the wrenching decision to become a ghetto policeman in a small town near Warsaw. The true tragedy of his choice becomes clear when during the Aktion he must witness his own wife and child being forced to board a train to the Treblinka extermination camp." "Filled with loathing for the Germans, the Poles, his Jewish brethren, and himself, Perechodnik fled the ghetto to shelter with a Polish woman in Warsaw. In the course of 105 terror-filled days in hiding, he poured out his poignant story. Written while Nazi boots pounded the streets of the neighborhood and while his tortured memory was painfully fresh, this memoir has a rare immediacy and raw power." "Shortly before his death in 1944, he entrusted the precious diary to a Polish friend. The document was eventually deposited in the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem. Left nearly forgotten for half a century, it was finally published in Poland in 1993. We owe a great debt to historian Frank Fox for bringing us this sensitive translation, which reminds us anew of the power and truth of historical memory."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. General Geology Chapter 3. Climate Inferred from Geology and Archaeology Chapter 4. Environmental Data for Specific Sites within the Dead Sea Region Chapter 5. Coordination of Biblical and Scientific Information Chapter 6. Sodom and Gomorrah Event Chapter 7. Synopsis

A stunning memoir of a mother and her daughter's survival in WWII and their subsequent lifelong struggle with faith In this captivating and elegantly illustrated graphic memoir, Miriam Katin retells the story of her and her mother's escape on foot from the Nazi invasion of Budapest. With her father off fighting for the Hungarian army and the German troops quickly approaching, Katin and her mother are forced to flee to the countryside after faking their deaths. Leaving behind all of their belongings and loved ones, and unable to tell anyone of their whereabouts, they disguise themselves as a Russian servant and illegitimate child, while literally staying a few steps ahead of the German soldiers. We Are on Our Ownis a woman's attempt to rebuild her earliest childhood trauma in order to come to an understanding of her lifelong questioning of faith. Katin's faith is shaken as she wonders how God could create and tolerate such a wretched world, a world of fear and hiding, bargaining and theft, betrayal and abuse. The complex and horrific experiences on the run are difficult for a child to understand, and as a child, Katin saw them with the simple longing, sadness, and curiosity she felt when her dog ran away or a stranger made her mother cry. Katin's ensuing lifelong struggle with faith is depicted throughout the book in beautiful full-color sequences. We Are on Our Ownis the first full-length graphic novel by Katin, at the age of sixty-three.

This compelling first-person account is an eye-opening depiction of life in occupied Holland during World War II. As a twelve-year-old girl, Cornelia Fuykschot experienced the invasion of her country by the Germans and the resulting loss of freedom, scarcity of food, and steady deterioration of normal, everyday life. Fuykschot describes how she and her family were forced to adapt to the conditions of a police state. Though still a child, she took on the responsibility of begging for food and helping to hide her father from the Nazis, who had shipped every man they could find to the munitions factory to work for the German war effort. Fuykschot vividly illustrates the strength, ingenuity, and dogged determination of ordinary people struggling to maintain some semblance of normalcy against a backdrop of bombing raids and daily Nazi terrorism. Hunger in Holland is a moving chronicle of a horrifying period in world history, a testament to both survivors and victims, and a valuable lesson for those who have never known the terror of war.