Seventy-seven years ago, a telegram bearing a horrifying and unforgettable message reached America’s foremost Jewish leader. It revealed the first comprehensive details about the systematic mass murder that would come to be known as the Holocaust. The author of the fateful message was Gerhart Riegner, a 30 year-old attorney serving as the Geneva representative of the World Jewish[…]
On August 23rd, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union stunned the world by announcing a nonaggression pact. By David Carlin Joseph Stalin cracks a smile. The dictator’s cold eyes even appear to twinkle. Next to him, the Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, beams with smug satisfaction. That night, Stalin will toast Hitler’s health.[…]
She caused a furor when she coined “the banality of evil” to describe mindless acts of Nazi horror. By Kathleen B. JonesWriter, Editor, Publisher “There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is a dangerous activity.” Hannah Arendt Fifty years ago, on October 28, 1964, a televised conversation between the German-Jewish political theorist, Hannah Arendt, and the well-known[…]
About 3000 resisters, many under the age of 25, were tried in German military courts in France and executed. World War II in Europe was the cause of innumerable atrocities against civilians: for instance, the Shoah, Allied and Axis carpet bombing, the destruction of Warsaw, and the cruelties of enforced starvation. Another example is less[…]
The journalist’s witty Paris Letters for the New Yorker helped establish Americans’ feelings of superiority over Europe. By Matthew Wills Janet Flanner, part of that famous group of ex-pats in Paris that included Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, was a significant journalist in her own right, though she once described herself as “a high-class gossip[…]
Without a doubt, the most influential concept in German university history is that of the “unity of teaching and research”. Abstract Prior to the 19th century, poetry, rhetoric, historiography and moral philosophy were considered particularly valuable to humane education, as they transmitted knowledge of beauty, goodness and truth. These so-called “fine sciences” (“schöne Wissenschaften”) were[…]
Widely held beliefs in eugenic “science” and pervasive fear of foreigners led the US Congress to pass quota laws that had severely restricted immigration to the United States since 1924. Introduction On his first day in office in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the American people, “The only thing we have to fear is[…]
More than seventy British men and women were convicted – mostly in secret trials – of working to help Nazi Germany win the war. For almost 80 years, Britain has told itself – and the world – a powerful story about the country’s heroism during the dark days of World War Two. Newspapers, television and[…]
After WWI, German psychiatrists diagnosed traumatized soldiers as having “hysteria,” othering the men to somewhat disastrous effect. For many soldiers who returned from World War I, the terror of combat never abated. Though the statistics are still fuzzy, at least one historian estimates that upwards of twenty percent of all soldiers suffered from shell shock, the early twentieth-century[…]
The poster became a cheap transmitter of these various messages and combined visual arts with psychological methods to incessantly repeat Nazi ideologies to the German public. In 1925, a bellicose Adolf Hitler understood that he needed the power of mass persuasion to push his political ideology on the German people. Citing propaganda as an essential component of statecraft[…]
The renowned German school of art and design now has its own museum in the town where it was founded a century ago. Introduction The Getty Research Institute exhibitions Bauhaus Beginnings (June 11–October 13, 2019) and Bauhaus: Building the New Artist (online from June 11) explore the founding years of the German Bauhaus, presenting rarely seen artworks, notes, and[…]
The often overlapping religious and diplomatic networks acted in concert to advance, for example, Protestant concerns. By Dr. Linda S. FreyProfessor of HistoryUniversity of Montana By Dr. Marsha L. FreyProfessor of HistoryKansas State University Geoffrey Parker, a noted historian of the Thirty Years’ War, argued that one of the great achievements of that conflict was[…]
In a discussion with Reinhard Bernbeck, he delves into the origins and ethics of conducting archaeological investigations of the Nazi period. By Christopher DeCou the end of the Cold War, high school students from the German city of Witten visited the Dachau concentration camp to learn about the Holocaust. Walking among the still buildings, they[…]
Germany, which had only unified in 1870, was a latecomer to the colonial game. By David Carlin “Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot.” General Lothar von Trotha, Commander of German Forces in South West Africa, 1905 Hundreds of emaciated prisoners look out helplessly.[…]
The humiliating failure of the vaunted Maginot Line thrilled the vast majority of Germans, who adored their Führer and supported his ruthless agenda. “Monsieur Maginot built a fortified line,” noted the German justice inspector Friedrich Kellner in his diary in June 1940, just after Hitler’s army burst through the French fortifications. If France really expected[…]
Jewish life did not solely consist of worrying about one’s day-to-day survival. Summary Jewish culture reflects the experience of Hamburg’s Jewish population. Jews might be the creators, sponsors or the audience of a given cultural product. It is often difficult to clearly separate Jewish culture from Christian culture. For example, the richly ornamented graves at[…]
The urban region of Hamburg represents a special case in the modern religious history of German Jewry in several regards. Summary The urban region of Hamburg represents a special case in the modern religious history of German Jewry in several regards: first, because the Ashkenazi Jews of the towns of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek were[…]
Bombing bridges and railway lines over which both deported Jews and German troops were transported could have qualified as necessary for military purposes. By Dr. Rafael MedovFounder and DirectorThe David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies Seventy-five years ago this week—on March 19, 1944—German troops marched into Hungary. The country’s 800,000 Jews, the last major[…]
The appeasement policy pursued by Britain and France was founded on the premise that Germany was maltreated by the victors of World War I. A turning point in the history of international relations refers to an event that alters significantly the present process in international relations, which entails a long-lasting, considerable effect in it. A turning[…]
Germany can look back on a long history of migration. By Dr. Vera Hanewinkel and Dr. Jochen OltmerProfessors of HisoryUniversität Osnabrück Migration Flows during the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) led to serious destruction and a significant reduction in population in some German regions. The respective sovereigns therefore recruited employable[…]
When the German parliamentary building went up in flames, Hitler harnessed the incident to seize power. By Lorraine Boissoneault Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there’s fire, conspiracy theories are sure to follow. At least, that’s what happened in Germany on February 27, 1933, when a sizeable portion of the parliamentary building in Berlin,[…]
High culture played an important political role in Hitler’s Germany. References to music, history, philosophy, and art formed a key part of Nazi strategy. High culture played an important political role in Hitler’s Germany. References to music, history, philosophy, and art formed a key part of the Nazi strategy to reverse the symptoms of decline[…]
The effectiveness of the propaganda machinery altered perception, thus reality. Abstract In his epic Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler made a point of disparaging the intelligentsia. He asserted that propaganda was the most effective tool to use in political campaigns since especially the popular masses generally possessed limited astuteness and were generally devoid of intellect. This[…]
Though the fall of the Berlin Wall did not bring along the utopia many had hoped for, it is a symbolic moment for the victors of the Cold War. Introduction Nearly 30 years ago, in the night of November 9-10, 1989, East German border police opened the gates at crossing points in the Berlin Wall,[…]
Hostility against Jews intensified in the course of the crises caused by social and cultural changes. Introduction Beginning at the end of the 18th century, the spreading idea of human rights, the new, Enlightenment-era way of thinking about the state, and the social change from a corporative society divided into estates to a bourgeois-capitalist society led[…]