History Commons^™

"We Will Not Be Silent": The White Rose And National Identity In Post-War Germany, Ardis Smith

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 1942, the White Rose resistance group, composed mainly of German university students, published its first leaflet. As part of a series written by Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell entitled the "Leaflets of the White Rose," the tract discussed the need for Germans to acknowledge the inhumane actions of Nazi Germany and encouraged Germans to adopt an attitude of "passive resistance" to the rule of National Socialism. The White Rose hoped to motivate Germans to join the resistance movement by asking "[w)ho among us has any conception of the enormous shame that we and our children will feel when eventually …

The Perpetual Progression In The Schleswig-Holstein Duchy: History, Politics, And Religion, 1460-1864, Christian Anthony Ahlers

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

German nationalism in the Schleswig and Holstein duchies that predates the German Unification Wars of the Nineteenth Century continuously transformed in response to Danish encroachment, civic disputes regarding treaty legitimacy, and war. The Germans in the duchies fought to retain their ancestral homelands and, in doing so, embraced a pan-Germanic consciousness that is the foundation for early modern nationalism. This consciousness dates back hundreds of years. This case study examines the Germans of Schleswig and Holstein and their experiences with the consistent and pressing Danish encroachment. Despite the encroachment, the Germans remained connected with their culture, traditions, religion, and their …

Community, Race, And National Socialism: The Evolution Of The Ideology Of Volksgemeinschaft, 1807-1945, Robert B. Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historiography of the National Socialist Volksgemeinschaft, or people’s community, has traditionally been divided between historians surmising its construction under the Third Reich as a genuine undertaking meant to uplift German society, and those who view the project as a propaganda effort which assisted the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in retaining legitimacy. Utilizing the plethora of works written on the topic, and a handful of primary sources from pre-Nazified Germany, NSDAP officials, and average citizens alike, this work will demonstrate that, as early as 1807, German philosophers, statesmen, and eventually a large majority of the population yearned for the national unity …

A Sense Of Loss: The Effect Of Prisoner Camp Conditions On German Pows’ Masculinity During The First World War, Analucia Lugo

The Purdue Historian

During the First World War, almost a million German soldiers became prisoners of war (POW) and held captive in enemy camps. The moment of capture and arrest caused these men to experience debilitating emotions, including guilt and fear. Varied conditions at POW camps bolstered these responses and often determined prisoner health and morale throughout the war. This article examines how camps in Britain, France, and Russia treated German POWs, and how German nationalism affected these soldiers' senses of masculinity and patriotism during and after the war.

Geopolitical Actions Of The German Empire Prior To The First World War – A Modified Dime Analysis –, Gregory A. Mauck

Masters Theses

It is said that the victors write the history. That adage is demonstrably true for the history of the First World War. The German Empire, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, has shouldered most of the blame for the war for most of the past century. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles declares this German guilt in no uncertain terms. But is this a fair assessment? A study of pre-war German diplomatic and military actions provides a method to partially assess the culpability of Germany for the Great War. A fair analysis of that geopolitical activity shows that the actions of the …

Changes In German Holocaust Memorials, Stephanie Bergeson

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Since World War II, Holocaust memorials have been built in many countries for a variety of reasons. Many memorials have been erected as places to remember and mourn the loss of those who were its victims. Some are built mainly to raise difficu lt but important moral and ethical questions in a world of increasing globalization and relativism. Others have been built to distance a country's association with the Holocaust and the Nazi government. Still others, as was the case with early Holocaust memorials in West Germany, were built in an attempt to forget or bury the past.

Germany's War For World Conquest And The Extermination Of Jews, Gerhard L. Weinberg

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Fifty years ago the war between Germany and the Allies was coming to its final stage. In the East, the Red Army had broken through the German central front in Poland, had driven deeply into Germany itself, had taken much of the Silesian industrial area, had established a bridgehead over the Oder River, and was eliminating pockets of German resistance isolated by the winter offensive, even while preparations were beginning for the final assault on Berlin. In the South, all Soviet territory once occupied by the Germans had been freed almost a year earlier, and the Red Army occupied Romania, …

Esra Özyürek. Subcontractors Of Guilt: Holocaust Memory & Muslim Belonging In Postwar Germany, Stefan Gunther

Comparative Civilizations Review

As early as 1995, James E. Young, referring to the “social effects of public memorial spaces” (p.20) in Germany, stated that “Holocaust memorial work in Germany today remains a tortured, self-reflective, even paralyzing preoccupation.” (p.21) He continues with a series of questions: “How does a state recite, much less commemorate, the litany of its misdeeds, making them part of its reason for being? Under what memorial aegis, whose rules, does a nation remember its own barbarity? Where is the tradition for memorial mea culpa, when combined remembrance and self-indictment seem so hopelessly at odds?” (p.22)

Mathematicians Going East, Pasha Zusmanovich

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

I survey emigration of mathematicians from Europe, before and during WWII, to Russia. The emigration started at the end of 1920s, the time of “Great Break”, and accelerated in 1930s, after the introduction in Germany of the “non-Aryan laws”. Not everyone who wanted to emigrate managed to do so, and most of those who did spent a relatively short time in Russia, being murdered or deported, or fleeing the Russian regime. After 1937, the year of “Great Purge”, only a handful of emigrant mathematicians remained, and even fewer managed to leave a trace in the scientific milieu of their new …

Dogma: How A Convenient Narrative Led To The Holocaust, Morgan Rynn Schroeder

History: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

I developed this research paper as a result of my study abroad experience in Germany in June of 2023. In this paper I weave a combination of personal experience, primary sources, and works by historians to explain how Nazi ideology developed into genocide. I also emphasize the importance of how history is remembered in the form of monuments and museums.

Buber The Radical Egalitarian And Buber And Psychology, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

My first iteration for this paper was to present Martin Buber in the context of radical politics in Germany and to focus upon his relationship to the anarchist Gustav Landauer. After a brief search, I found too few sources that were easily accessible from here in the United States, so as part of this presentation I situate Buber in the radical politics extant mostly during his time in Germany and in Berlin. I focus here on Buber’s psychology but include several intellectual side trips visiting aspects of Buber’s philosophy and his politics. I cannot separate them in discussing Buber and …

The Power Of Image: Sixteenth-Century German Witchcraft Imagery, Amie Fillet

Voces Novae

No abstract provided.

Torn Between The “Creeds Of The Devil”: The German-Finnish Co-Belligerency In World War Ii, Stephanie Megan Wright

Masters Theses

In an article for the Sunday Chronicle in June 1937, Winston Churchill described Nazism and Communism as “the creeds of the devil.” Caught between these two ideologies that “are at each other’s throats,” Finland attempted to remain a sovereign nation. This would prove to be virtually impossible after the November 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland. While Joseph Stalin and his advisors “expected [a] triumphal parade,” the dogged resistance of the Finnish Army and people “turned [that parade] into a bloody three-month war.” Furnished in the crucible of conflict, battling for their very existence as a nation, the Winter War united …

Individual Rights Vs. Collective Value In Paragraph 218: The Role Of Political Tradition In The Development Of German Abortion Policy, Annie Morgan

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

No abstract provided.

Was Jesus Christ Born A Jew Or Not? Luther And Protestant Anti-Judaism In Nazi Germany, Darian Sullivan

All Theses

Martin Luther’s role as the founder of German Protestantism placed him in a position where he was the hero for two opposing factions that formed within the German Evangelical Church in the wake of the Nazi party’s rise to power in 1933. The two factions were the pro-Nazi German Christians and the anti-Nazi Confessing Church. The two sides appealed to different aspects of Luther’s theology to defend their beliefs. Martin Luther’s theology, particularly his anti-Judaic beliefs was a crucial issue for the divided Protestant Church. Luther’s writings are crucial for determining how influential he was for both groups.

Perkins, John Casey, 1918-2010 (Mss 753), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Collection 753. Reports of the operations of the U.S. Army, Third Infantry Division in Italy, Sicily, France and Germany during World War II. Includes reports relating to the service of Lieutenant Colonel John C. Perkins of Bowling Green, Kentucky in the Third Signal Company. Also includes memoranda of surrender written by Nazi SS officer Otto Skorzeny, taken into custody by Perkins in Austria in May 1945 (Click on "Additional Files" below for scans).

Die Deutsche Nationalversammlung Und Weimar: On The Creation Of Democracy In Weimar Germany, Jason Wendling

Honors Theses

This paper is a historical analysis of the creation of the Weimar Republic, as well as a political analysis of the Weimar Republic’s constitution. In reviewing both Weimar’s history as well as the constitution, I hope to inspire learners to look back to the Weimar Republic, and not focus primarily on the failures that led to the rise of the Nazi Regime, but rather celebrate the successes that the drafters of the constitution were able to achieve. I review the history of the 1918 November Revolution, the history and party programs of the three important parties of the Weimar Republic, …

Resisting Nazism Within Hitler’S Germany, Patricia M. Mische

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

I Was Looking For God: A Study Of Wehrmacht Personnel And Their Personal Relationships With Religion, Christopher Bishop

Master's Theses

The Wehrmacht was Germany’s fighting force in the field during World War II. Its brutality and discriminatory practices rivaled that of the Nazi paramilitary and police units dispatched alongside them in newly conquered areas during this conflict. Coming from a society that was not at all unfamiliar with Christianity, some within the Wehrmacht related to Christianity in some form and attempted to use it to either justify actions or make sense of the world around them.

While considerable scholarship exists on the Nazi Party’s relationship to Christianity as a convenient propaganda tool for both soldier and civilian alike, the historiography …

Stewart, James Minor, 1916-2017 (Mss 748), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Collection 748. Wartime log kept by James M. Stewart, Bowling Green, Kentucky, during his 2½ years as a prisoner of war in Germany during World War II. Includes artwork, poetry and photographs of the prison camp and fellow prisoners.

Unsere Neue Heimat: German National Identity In The Pages Of The Südwest Newspaper, 1910–1914, Patrick Sullivan

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In recent decades, historians have increasingly recognized the significance of German colonialism. Though short-lived in relation to other European overseas empires (created in 1884 and dissolved in 1919), the German colonial empire had a substantial historical impact. Historians have drawn particular attention to colonialism’s influence on national identity within the Deutsches Reich. To many Germans in the recently formed nation-state (founded in 1871), the foreign possessions represented Germany’s status as a world power and a mission to spread German culture across much of the globe. The colonial settler press was an especially important institution to such imperialist modes of thought. …

The Wehrmacht Experience In World War Ii, Tyler Masterson

Theses

German soldiers who were in the Wehrmacht during World War II faced many different experiences from the beginning of the war when it seemed they were in control to later parts of the war were they were being driven back by the Allies. Along with the different experiences from different times of the war, they also faced different experiences when it came to what front they were fighting on. Fronts and theaters that stretch from North Africa and the Mediterranean Campaign to Eastern Europe and Russia to Western Europe. When it comes to the troops that were fighting in the …

Zerschlagen: German Unification And Divided Identity, Harrison Quinn

Honors Theses

The Unification of East and West Germany ended one of the Cold War’s longest divides, but only on paper. After decades under a unified German state, former East Germans face lower standards of living, economic opportunities, and access to national utilities compared to their Western counterparts. This inequality stems from the bifurcated German identity, which remains largely unaddressed amid German state ambitions for a central role in international institutions. The failure to properly acknowledge East German identity and the suppression thereof demonstrates the failure of Unification to unite the German nation. Political ambitions outweighed a true reconciliation of German nationhood, …

Otto Strasser, The Nazi Party, And The Politics Of Opposition, James Francis Hughes Ii

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

What do we know about Otto Strasser? He and his brother Gregor were highly influential in the early years of the Nazi party; therefore, what should we consider when looking back? To fully understand the individual, we must investigate and analyze: Strasser's post-Nazi Party life, his post-Nazi political aspirations, and the apparent whitewashing of his past as a Nazi. The latter of which most individuals gleaned solely from the fact that he, himself, an ardent National Socialist, was, nonetheless, an opponent of Adolf Hitler. By analyzing Strasser's assertions in his numerous books, articles, and chapters, and comparing them with the …

A Summer Of Mass Murder: 1941 Rehearsal For The Hungarian Holocaust, George Eisen

Purdue University Press Books

Most accounts of the Holocaust focus on trainloads of prisoners speeding toward Auschwitz, with its chimneys belching smoke and flames, in the summer of 1944. This book provides a hitherto untold chapter of the Holocaust by exploring a prequel to the gas chambers: the face-to-face mass murder of Jews in Galicia by bullets.

The summer of 1941 ushered in a chain of events that had no precedent in the rapidly unfolding history of World War II and the Holocaust. In six weeks, more than twenty thousand Hungarian Jews were forcefully deported to Galicia and summarily executed. In exploring the fate …

Power In Portrayal: An Exploration Of The Evolving Cold War Relationship Between Germany And America Through Film, Kaleb Wentz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The end of the Second World War brought many questions to the United States. One of the greatest among these was what to do with defeated Germany. Many clamored for the dissolution of the former Nazi State and the shameful humbling of its people while others recognized the value of a revitalized Germany as an ally against the looming threat of an emboldened and empowered postwar Soviet Union. Though retribution held sway immediately following the war, the Cold War consensus of an alliance with West Germany and a reimagining of the German people as victims rather than perpetrators won out …

Money Moves: An Analysis Of Chinese Foreign Direct Investment In Europe, Susan Soh

Honors Theses

In recent years, China has begun engaging in outward foreign direct investment (FDI). There is a significant amount of literature dedicated to understanding China’s FDI in developing nations. However, very little research has been conducted over Chinese FDI in advanced economies. As a result of this gap in existing literature, the question arises, what explains Chinese FDI in Europe?

As FDI is a transaction to which both the donor and recipient countries must agree, this thesis has a dual focus. One chapter of the thesis analyzes the effects of and motivations for Chinese FDI on European nations. In this chapter, …

272nd Army Field Artillery Battalion (Sc 3665), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3665. Materials collected by Haskell Pedigo, a World War II veteran of the U.S. Army’s 272nd Field Artillery Battalion. Includes copies of reports of actions against the enemy, August 1944-June 1945; unit histories, 1944-1945, and other historical data and reminiscences; and reunion materials, lists of attendees, and memorial rolls.

Wrongfully Accused: Germany And The Origins Of World War I, Jauschua Curtis Stout

Masters Theses

By examining the events that led to the outbreak of the First World War, one can determine whether any one nation was responsible for starting the war or failed to exercise its ability to prevent it. The origins of The First World War have seen no shortage of attention from historians in the hundred-plus years since its conclusion. Nevertheless, none have successfully presented a case that explains how what should have been a relatively minor diplomatic crisis transformed into the First World War. Instead, the traditional stance of blaming Germany for the war has been the de facto argument since …

The Battle Of Tours Reconsidered, Paul Aitchison

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

This paper examines the Battle of Tours/Poitiers in 732 between the Merovingian Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, and the Umayyad governor-general of al-Andalus in modern-day Spain, Abdul Rahman Al-Ghafiqi. Since the pivotal works of Sir Edward Gibbons were published in 1776, the battle has been seen as keeping Europe from falling completely to Islam. More recent scholarship highlights the battle as pivotal in Charles's quest to consolidate power in his ultimately successful bid to create a new power in western Europe, the Carolingian dynasty, which would eventually be created in the crowning as the Holy Roman Empire his grandson, …