The Respectable Career of Fritz K.

The Respectable Career of Fritz K. PDF Author: Hartmut Berghoff
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782385940
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Entrepreneur and Nazi functionary Fritz Kiehn lived through almost 100 years of German history, from the Bismarck era to the late Bonn Republic. A successful manufacturer, Kiehn joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and obtained a number of influential posts after 1933, making him one of the most powerful Nazi functionaries in southern Germany. These posts allowed him ample opportunity to profit from “Aryanizations” and state contracts. After 1945, he restored his reputation, was close to Adenauer's CDU during Germany's economic miracle, and was a respected and honored citizen in Trossingen. Kiehn's biography provides a key to understanding the political upheavals of the twentieth century, especially the workings of the corrupt Nazi system as well as the “coming to terms” with National Socialism in the Federal Republic.

The Respectable Career of Fritz K.

The Respectable Career of Fritz K. PDF Author: Hartmut Berghoff
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782385940
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book

Book Description
Entrepreneur and Nazi functionary Fritz Kiehn lived through almost 100 years of German history, from the Bismarck era to the late Bonn Republic. A successful manufacturer, Kiehn joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and obtained a number of influential posts after 1933, making him one of the most powerful Nazi functionaries in southern Germany. These posts allowed him ample opportunity to profit from “Aryanizations” and state contracts. After 1945, he restored his reputation, was close to Adenauer's CDU during Germany's economic miracle, and was a respected and honored citizen in Trossingen. Kiehn's biography provides a key to understanding the political upheavals of the twentieth century, especially the workings of the corrupt Nazi system as well as the “coming to terms” with National Socialism in the Federal Republic.

Baldur von Schirach

Baldur von Schirach PDF Author: Oliver Rathkolb
Publisher: Frontline Books
ISBN: 139902096X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Though three of his four grandparents were from America and the first language he learned at home was English, Baldur von Schirach became one of the Third Reich’s most influential individuals. He joined the Nazi Party as early as 1925 at the age of eighteen and three years later became a member of its National Leadership. He also married Henriette, the daughter of Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. Von Schirach continued to rise through the ranks of the Nazi Party, reaching the rank of SA-Gruppenführer. It was as the leader of the Hitler Youth organization, however, for which von Schirach is best remembered, becoming Reichsführer of the Hitler Youth on 16 June 1932, and the following year was given responsibility for all youth organizations in Germany. He also became a member of the Reichstag as a representative of the Party. Despite his influential position, he was called up for military service and served in the French campaign of 1940. Following this he became Reich Governor and the Nazi’s Gauleiter Reichsstatthalter in Vienna – powerful positions he retained until the final collapse of the Third Reich in May 1945. His responsibilities as Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter included overseeing the deportation of Vienna’s Jews to ghettos and concentration camps in occupied Poland. Though a confirmed anti-Semite, later in the war he pleaded for a moderate treatment of the eastern European peoples and criticized the conditions in which Jews were being deported. This caused a breach with Hitler and the Nazi leadership, though he managed to retain his position in Vienna. Following his capture by US troops, von Schirach was among the major war criminals put on trial at Nuremburg. Found guilty of crimes against humanity on 1 October 1946, von Schirach was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. He served out his time in the company of Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer in Spandau prison. He admitted his crimes and his role in the deportations and in his autobiography, I Believed in Hitler, he explained how he was drawn into the world of the Nazis. He also said that his aim was destroy any belief in the rebirth of Nazism as well as blaming himself for not having done more to prevent the concentration camps. This detailed and balanced analysis of Baldur von Schirach reveals the true and ambivalent nature of a complex and fascinating individual who played a key role in the events leading up to, and during, the Second World War.

A Companion to Nazi Germany

A Companion to Nazi Germany PDF Author: Shelley Baranowski
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118936876
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description
A Deep Exploration of the Rise, Reign, and Legacy of the Third Reich For its brief existence, National Socialist Germany was one of the most destructive regimes in the history of humankind. Since that time, scholarly debate about its causes has volleyed continuously between the effects of political and military decisions, pathological development, or modernity gone awry. Was terror the defining force of rule, or was popular consent critical to sustaining the movement? Were the German people sympathetic to Nazi ideology, or were they radicalized by social manipulation and powerful propaganda? Was the “Final Solution” the motivation for the Third Reich’s rise to power, or simply the outcome? A Companion to Nazi Germany addresses these crucial questions with historical insight from the Nazi Party’s emergence in the 1920s through its postwar repercussions. From the theory and context that gave rise to the movement, through its structural, cultural, economic, and social impacts, to the era’s lasting legacy, this book offers an in-depth examination of modern history’s most infamous reign. Assesses the historiography of Nazism and the prehistory of the regime Provides deep insight into labor, education, research, and home life amidst the Third Reich’s ideological imperatives Describes how the Third Reich affected business, the economy, and the culture, including sports, entertainment, and religion Delves into the social militarization in the lead-up to war, and examines the social and historical complexities that allowed genocide to take place Shows how modern-day Germany confronts and deals with its recent history Today’s political climate highlights the critical need to understand how radical nationalist movements gain an audience, then followers, then power. While historical analogy can be a faulty basis for analyzing current events, there is no doubt that examining the parallels can lead to some important questions about the present. Exploring key motivations, environments, and cause and effect, this book provides essential perspective as radical nationalist movements have once again reemerged in many parts of the world.

The Ethics of Seeing

The Ethics of Seeing PDF Author: Jennifer Evans
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785337297
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Throughout Germany’s tumultuous twentieth century, photography was an indispensable form of documentation. Whether acting as artists, witnesses, or reformers, both professional and amateur photographers chronicled social worlds through successive periods of radical upheaval. The Ethics of Seeing brings together an international group of scholars to explore the complex relationship between the visual and the historic in German history. Emphasizing the transformation of the visual arena and the ways in which ordinary people made sense of world events, these revealing case studies illustrate photography’s multilayered role as a new form of representation, a means to subjective experience, and a fresh mode of narrating the past.

Germany and the Black Diaspora

Germany and the Black Diaspora PDF Author: Mischa Honeck
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857459546
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The rich history of encounters prior to World War I between people from German-speaking parts of Europe and people of African descent has gone largely unnoticed in the historical literature-not least because Germany became a nation and engaged in colonization much later than other European nations. This volume presents intersections of Black and German history over eight centuries while mapping continuities and ruptures in Germans' perceptions of Blacks. Juxtaposing these intersections demonstrates that negative German perceptions of Blackness proceeded from nineteenth-century racial theories, and that earlier constructions of "race" were far more differentiated. The contributors present a wide range of Black–German encounters, from representations of Black saints in religious medieval art to Black Hessians fighting in the American Revolutionary War, from Cameroonian children being educated in Germany to African American agriculturalists in Germany's protectorate, Togoland. Each chapter probes individual and collective responses to these intercultural points of contact.

Fellow Tribesmen

Fellow Tribesmen PDF Author: Frank Usbeck
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782386556
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Germans exhibited a widespread cultural passion for tales and representations of Native Americans. This book explores the evolution of German national identity and its relationship with the ideas and cultural practices around “Indianthusiasm.” Pervasive and adaptable, imagery of Native Americans was appropriated by Nazi propaganda and merged with exceptionalist notions of German tribalism, oxymoronically promoting the Nazis’ racial ideology. This book combines cultural and intellectual history to scrutinize the motifs of Native American imagery in German literature, media, and scholarship, and analyzes how these motifs facilitated the propaganda effort to nurture national pride, racial thought, militarism, and hatred against the Allied powers among the German populace.

The Second Generation

The Second Generation PDF Author: Andreas W. Daum
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782389938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
Of the thousands of children and young adults who fled Nazi Germany in the years before the Second World War, a remarkable number went on to become trained historians in their adopted homelands. By placing autobiographical testimonies alongside historical analysis and professional reflections, this richly varied collection comprises the first sustained effort to illuminate the role these men and women played in modern historiography. Focusing particularly on those who settled in North America, Great Britain, and Israel, it culminates in a comprehensive, meticulously researched biobibliographic guide that provides a systematic overview of the lives and works of this “second generation.”

Gustav Stresemann

Gustav Stresemann PDF Author: Karl Heinrich Pohl
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789202183
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
As a foreign minister and chancellor of Weimar Germany, Gustav Stresemann is a familiar figure for students of German history – one who, for many, embodied the best qualities of German interwar liberalism. However, a more nuanced and ambivalent picture emerges in this award-winning biography, which draws on extensive research and new archival material to enrich our understanding of Stresmann’s public image and political career. It memorably explores the personality of a brilliant but flawed politician who endured class anxiety and social marginalization, and who died on the eve of Germany’s descent into economic and political upheaval.

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Third Reich

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Third Reich PDF Author: Robert Gellately
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191044016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
At age thirty in 1919, Adolf Hitler had no accomplishments. He was a rootless loner, a corporal in a shattered army, without money or prospects. A little more than twenty years later, in autumn 1941, he directed his dynamic forces against the Soviet Union, and in December, the Germans were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. At that moment, Hitler appeared — however briefly — to be the most powerful ruler on the planet. Given this dramatic turn of events, it is little wonder that since 1945 generations of historians keep trying to explain how it all happened. This richly illustrated history provides a readable and fresh approach to the complex history of the Third Reich, from the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933 to the final collapse in 1945. Using photographs, paintings, propaganda images, and a host of other such materials from a wide range of sources, including official documents, cinema, and the photography of contemporary amateurs, foreigners, and the Allied armies, it distils our ideas about the period and provides a balanced and accessible account of the whole era.

The Oxford History of the Third Reich

The Oxford History of the Third Reich PDF Author: Earl Ray Beck Professor of History Robert Gellately
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192886835
Category : Germany
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Histories you can trust. At age thirty in 1919, Adolf Hitler had no accomplishments. He was a rootless loner, a corporal in a shattered army, without money or prospects. A little more than twenty years later, in autumn 1941, he directed his dynamic forces against the Soviet Union, and in December, the Germans were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. At that moment, Hitler appeared -- however briefly -- to be the most powerful ruler on the planet. Given this dramatic turn of events, it is little wonder that since 1945 generations of historians keep trying to explain how it all happened. This rich history provides a readable and fresh approach to the complex history of the Third Reich, from the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933 to the final collapse in 1945, distilling our ideas about the period and providing a balanced and accessible account of the whole era.