History Commons^™

From Schleswig To Anschluss: The Plebiscites And Referendums Of Interwar Germany, Matthew J. Rocha

Honors Theses

This paper aims to bridge the gap between the plebiscites following the First World War and the referendums of the Third Reich. To this point, the literatures on these sets of votes have remained completely separate. No scholars have considered the NSDAP’s votes in the context of the postwar votes. By comparing and contrasting these groups of plebiscites for the first time, this paper will shed light on the democratic backsliding of interwar Germany.

This paper argues that when planning their referendums, the leaders of the Third Reich had the immediate postwar plebiscites in mind and were, in some cases, …

The Night Of The Long Knives: Reconsidered, Edward G. Gunning Jr.

Dissertations and Theses

The "Night of the Long Knives"—June 30, 1934, and the murderous days that followed is one of the more fascinating episodes in the history of the Third Reich. A year after taking power, multiple circles of influence challenged Nazi control. The National Socialists perceived enemies everywhere. At times the internal challenges were as significant as the external.

Much of the conflict centered on a myriad of perspectives on the nature and direction of the Nazi revolution. For Hitler, the revolution was complete, at least for now. His real revolution was a racial one, whose full dimensions only became manifest later. …

Complicity In The Perversion Of Justice: The Role Of Lawyers In Eroding The Rule Of Law In The Third Reich, Cynthia Fountaine

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

A fundamental tenet of the legal profession is that lawyers and judges are uniquely responsible—individually and collectively—for protecting the Rule of Law. This Article considers the failings of the legal profession in living up to that responsibility during Germany’s Third Reich. The incremental steps used by the Nazis to gain control of the German legal system—beginning as early as 1920 when the Nazi Party adopted a party platform that included a plan for a new legal system—turned the legal system on its head and destroyed the Rule of Law. By failing to uphold the integrity and independence of the profession, …

Die Kunst Des Betrugs: An Analysis Of National Socialist Propaganda, Nicholas Strasser

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Modern propaganda is often associated with oppressive authoritarian regimes in the 20^th century. This project seeks to compare Nazi propaganda in the years leading up to 1933 with propaganda following the Nazi ascension to power but before the drive to war. These differences were significant and meaningful enough to warrant closer examination. This comparison seeks to determine how the Nazis altered their propaganda once they ascended to power in 1933, specifically analyzing what the Nazis emphasized and retained from before 1933 once they no longer had to compete with other parties but instead had to consolidate power. For the …

Fashion Under The Swastika: An Analysis Of Women's Fashion During The Third Reich, Ayrika Johnson

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

This paper works to demonstrate women's fashion in Germany during WWII and how it was impacted by Nazi culture. Within Hitler's Germany, there was a desire to create a uniform community separate from the rest of the world, and greater than all others. Fashion is one way to analyze how the Nazis tried to accomplish this goal. The paper relies on speeches, magazines, and their fashion pages, and advertisement clippings to uncover the social, economic, and political factors at play. By using fashion as a means of expressing cultural, societal, economic, and political goals, the desires of the Nazi government …

“O Freunde, Nicht Diese Töne!" First World War Beethoven Reception As Precedent For The Nazi "Cult Of Art", David B. Dennis

David B. Dennis

No abstract provided.

Review Essay On Recent Literature About Music And German Politics, David B. Dennis

David B. Dennis

No abstract provided.

Review Of Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians And Their Music In The Third Reich (New York And Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), David B. Dennis

David B. Dennis

No abstract provided.

Review Of Pamela M. Potter, Most German Of The Arts: Musicology And Society From The Weimar Republic To The End Of Hitler’S Reich (New Haven And London: Yale University Press, 1998), David B. Dennis

David B. Dennis

No abstract provided.

Review Of Erik Levi, Music In The Third Reich (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994), David B. Dennis

David B. Dennis

No abstract provided.

Johannes Brahms's Requiem Eines Unpolitischen, David B. Dennis

David B. Dennis

No abstract provided.

Review Of Jonathan Petropoulos, Art As Politics In The Third Reich (Chapel Hill: North Carolina U.P., 1996), David B. Dennis

David B. Dennis

No abstract provided.

Hard Times; Hard Duties; Hard Hearts; The Volksgemeinschaft As An Indicator Of Identity Shift, Kaitlin Hampshire

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

How can one nation define an ideal community? The Reich’s Propaganda Ministry of Nazi Germany knew. No cultivation of community, or Volksgemeinschaft in the case of Nazi Germany, is complete without the use of propaganda. Nazi propaganda posters played several different roles in the formation of the community, such as maintaining the military, as well as labor forces not in the military, perpetuating anti-Soviet and anti-Jew feelings, creating the Führer myth, and gaining the support of Germany’s youth. All of the messages displayed in the posters identified the values of the members of the ‘National Community’ or Volksgemeinschaft.

Propaganda posters …

Home To The Reich: The Nazi Occupation Of Europe's Influence On Life Inside Germany, 1941-1945, Michael Patrick Mcconnell

Doctoral Dissertations

Between September 1944 and March 1945 the Nazi regime deported over 250,000 German civilians living in western Germany. These clearances drew upon brutal techniques of population control perfected earlier in occupied Europe. Led by veterans of the anti-partisan war in Eastern Europe, the Rhineland’s security personnel forcibly removed civilians from areas threatened by the Allied advance and appropriated their personal property, such as food and livestock, for the war effort. During the deportations, security officers forced men and teenage boys into militia units sent to the front, and executed suspected criminals, spies, and deserters. In theory and in practice, the …

A Case Study Of Melita Maschmann: Women And The Third Reich, Lynda Maureen Willett

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The case study of Melita Maschmann shows that despite the deep manipulation and gender discrimination she was subject to in her youth by National Socialism Maschmann made her own free choices as an adult and chose to zealously absorb its political ideology. The general assumption is that National Socialism, and fascism, were male dominated political ideologies in which women played a passive role, such as that professed by Gertrude Scholtz-Klink. However, many women found National Socialism appealing and became active supporters of its ideals. The purpose of this paper is to explore that appeal and analyze why certain women such …

The Third Reich In East German Film: Defa, Memory, And The Foundational Narrative Of The German Democratic Republic, Jaimie Kicklighter

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study will explore how East German films released from the 1940s to the 1980s played a central role in both reinforcing and chipping away at the national foundational narrative of the German Democratic Republic. This narrative looked back at the memory of the Third Reich and classified communists as heroes, Nazis as villains, and the majority of Germans as dangerously apolitical while also emphasizing the contemporary Cold War division between the east and the west. This thesis argues that DEFA films utilized the memory of the Third Reich to support, question, and expand this dynamic foundational narrative which remained …

“O Freunde, Nicht Diese Töne!" First World War Beethoven Reception As Precedent For The Nazi "Cult Of Art", David B. Dennis

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Music In The Third Reich, Delora J. Neuschwander

Musical Offerings

Music played a prominent role in the rise of Nazi culture in Germany and was used extensively in propaganda and indoctrination of the entire country; the Nazi party brought music and politics together and sought to shape their ideal culture by elevating their ideas of pure music to the highest status and outlawing what they defined as inferior. This study addresses Hitler’s specific views on music and explores several of the factors and individuals that contributed to his views. His views were directly inferred into the core of the Nazi party. Hitler himself was an artist and felt that art …

Jürgen Habermas And The Third Reich, Max Schiller

CMC Senior Theses

Jürgen Habermas is a preeminent European intellectual who was a German teenager during World War II. He was profoundly impacted by the devastation wrought by the Nazi regime and the social regression that it embodied. He dedicated his intellectual efforts to studying philosophy and developing a theoretical framework that demonstrates how collaboration and unimpeded dialogue are consistent with the promotion of human interest and how there exist quasi-transcendent protections against threats to modern social progress. This thesis explicates how the Third Reich, from Habermas's perspective, exemplifies violence to Habermas's model of communicative action and how we can learn to better …

Book Review:The Swiss And The Nazis: How The Alpine Republic Survived In The Shadow Of The Third Reich, Louis B. Kuppenheimer

Swiss American Historical Society Review

For hundreds of years Switzerland has been recognized as a nation committed to not being involved in military conflicts. However, in WWII it was confronted by the most serious and credible threat to its neutrality since the inception of the policy. To begin with, Switzerland's wartime population of 4,200,000 was outnumbered nearly eighteen to one by its most lethal contiguous neighbor, Germany. When Austria and Italy were thrown in, the ratio jumped to thirty to one. In addition, the Axis powers of Italy and Germany shared over seventy percent of Switzerland's border. And although her industrial production was of the …

Review Of Pamela M. Potter, Most German Of The Arts: Musicology And Society From The Weimar Republic To The End Of Hitler’S Reich (New Haven And London: Yale University Press, 1998), David B. Dennis

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Johannes Brahms's Requiem Eines Unpolitischen, David B. Dennis

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

The Miraculous Island Of Switzerland In The Midst Of The Third Reich, H. Dwight Page

Swiss American Historical Society Review

In the film version of Hermann Wouk's War and Remembrance, the Polish Jewish professor Aaron Jastrow and his American Jewish niece Nathalie fall into the trap of the monstrous Nazi genocidal machine and are interned at Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. Upon their arrival there, they are initially treated with brutality until Professor Jastrow reminds their Nazi captors, "We are under Swiss protection." Thereafter, they receive noticeably better treatment. Although Aaron Jastrow later perishes in a gas chamber at Auschwitz, Nathalie owes her own escape from the same camp and her eventual rescue by the Americans at Weimar, Germany in April, …

Review Of Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians And Their Music In The Third Reich (New York And Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), David B. Dennis

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Review Essay On Recent Literature About Music And German Politics, David B. Dennis

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Review Of Jonathan Petropoulos, Art As Politics In The Third Reich (Chapel Hill: North Carolina U.P., 1996), David B. Dennis

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Review Of Erik Levi, Music In The Third Reich (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994), David B. Dennis

History: Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

Report From Hans Schwalm On A Meeting With Ss-Sturmbannführer Noot Of The Sd, October 30, 1942, Hans Schwalm

Norwegian Projects

Schwalm summarizes a meeting with SS-Sturmbannführer Noot in which Noot promised that relevant SD documents would be made available to Schwalm in the areas of Germanic culture and scientific research. The situation in Norway was discussed, including political tension following the death of Minister Lunde. Skepticism was noted concerning the success of German research endeavors in Norway, partly attributed to political uncertainty and partly to "weary" Norwegian blood. It was noted however that the work was important and should be attempted nonetheless as even a negative result was significant for making decisions about the reconstruction of Europe.

Report From Hans Schwalm On A Meeting With Ss-Obersturmführer Dr. Vollberg, October 25, 1942, Hans Schwalm

Norwegian Projects

Hans Schwalm reports on a meeting with SS-Obersturmführer Dr. Vollberg of the SD on October 23, 1942. The meeting focuses on the anti-German sentiment of the Norwegian science community. It is noted that the University of Oslo had been rejecting members of Nasjonal Samling and German patience was wearing thin. They additionally discussed individual scientists with anti-German sentiments, including Anton Wilhelm Brøgger, Sigurd Grieg, Carl Marstrander, and Johannes Bøe. Of particular concern was the appointment of Johannes Bøe to a prestigious position without consulting the German occupiers. Schwalm asked to be informed on such topics. They additionally discussed Eberhard Günther …

Report By Hans Schwalm On A Meeting With Sd Literature Advisor Ss-Hauptsturmführer Falk, October 21, 1942, Hans Schwalm

Norwegian Projects

In this document, Hans Schwalm describes a meeting with SS-Hauptsturmführer Falk, literature advisor of the SD. Falk was unable to recommend individuals to collaborate on Ahnenerbe work, but recommended Schwalm reach out to Fin Halvorsen and SS-Obersturmführer Bischof. He described struggling efforts by Gudmud Schnittler to publish a Norwegian lexikon, attributing the failure to anti-German sentiment and refusal to collaborate. He also warns against the circle of people led by Gulbrund Lunde, as they were focused on Norse identity ("norrön") in opposition to a pan-Germanic concept of identity, including efforts to purge German influences from the Norwegian language.