A Duty to Forget? The 'Hitler Youth Generation' and the Transition from Nazism to Communism in Postwar East Germany, c. 1945-49

In Soviet-occupied East Germany during the mid- to late 1940s,a remarkable but scarcely remarked-upon transition took place.Hundreds of thousands of young Germans who had previously beenmembers of the Nazi youth organizations, the Hitler Youth (HJ)and the League of German Girls (BDM) flocked to join the Communist-ledFree German Youth (FDJ), a unisex ‘united youth organization’founded under Soviet auspices in March 1946. This paper examinesthe experiences of this ‘twice betrayed’ generation,whose members rapidly—though with varying degrees of enthusiasm—switchedallegiance from Nazism to Communism after the Second World Warand ultimately exchanged life in one authoritarian youth organizationfor life in another. Drawing on archival and interview material,it first seeks to outline Communist attitudes towards denazificationamong the young in the postwar period, before going on to examinefrom a grass-roots perspective the experiences, motivations,and attitudes of those who exchanged their HJ or BDM membershipbooks for those of the FDJ. Despite, or perhaps because of,East Germany's strongly-espoused and rigidly dogmatic ‘anti-fascism’,open discussion of the Nazi past was—for a variety ofreasons—taboo during the immediate postwar period, particularlyamong the young. This paper concludes by discussing the reasonsbehind this ‘pact of silence’ between the Communistsand the ‘Hitler Youth generation’—and howit impacted upon subsequent generations of young people ‘borninto socialism’.     

A Mastered Past? Prussia in Postwar German Memory

This article compares the recent ‘Prussia Year 2001’events marking the 300th anniversary of the founding of thePrussian state with the famous ‘Prussia Wave’ ofthe late 1970s and early 1980s in order to evaluate the evolvingstatus of Prussia in postwar German memory. It asserts thatGermans have largely abandoned their formerly polarized viewsof Prussia and have increasingly arrived at a more balancedview of its historical legacy. In developing a more normalizedview of the Prussian past, Germans have demonstrated that difficulthistorical legacies may, to some degree, in fact, be ‘mastered’.At the same time, the article shows how the seemingly successfulconfrontation with the Prussian past remains burdened by theenduring effort to confront the legacy of the Third Reich.     

Pictures of Atrocity: Public Discussion of Der gelbe Stern in Early 1960s West Germany

This article discusses Der gelbe Stern by Gerhard Schoenberner,a book of Holocaust photodocumentation appearing in West Germanyin 1960, and analyses its reception in the contemporary WestGerman press. Both the work and its public discussion are placedin context of Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit (‘comingto terms with the past’) and of what historian Habbo Knochhas termed ‘the return of the pictures’, in otherwords, atrocity pictures of the kind that the Allies forcedGermans to see right after the war, that Germans tended to shunthereafter, but that came back into public view in the late1950s. The reception of Schoenberner's book included reviewsfrom a wide range of West German newspapers and magazines. Thesereviews were overwhelmingly favourable and in considerable agreementon the book's importance. There was consensus that its pictureswould stir viewers emotionally and lead them to ‘the truth’about the Third Reich and its crime against the Jews. In addition,there were moral, historical and political reflections, includinga discussion of German ‘guilt’ concerned not onlywith specific crimes but with the general acquiescence of Germansociety in persecution of Jews in the 1930s. There was alsoappreciation of the role of pictures in conveying historicalunderstanding and, it was hoped, in educating West German youth.In addition, some reviewers considered Der gelbe Stern to bea prod to greater public discussion and thus to an enlargementof democratic culture. There was a marked reticence in the reviewsto indicate that awareness generated by this book would contributeto public outcry against the employment of men with a Nazi pastas high officials of the Federal Republic, or to defend Schoenberneragainst the charge that was sure to come from the Right: sincesome of his photos were from Communist Eastern Europe they wereof dubious origin and no doubt part of a plot to distract theWest from the fight against Communism. It is suggested thatsilence on either issue would have had the effect of keepingreaders focused on the pictures and their moral, historicaland democratic implications.     

The Reception of Sir Edward Elgar 1918-c.1934: A Reassessment

It is generally believed that the reputation of Sir Edward Elgarexperienced a disastrous reversal of fortune after the GreatWar. This has conventionally been explained by the changingmusical tastes of the public and by a postwar reaction againstthe unappealingly ‘Edwardian’ character of Elgar'smusic. Both claims, I argue, have been exaggerated. Examiningevidence from concert programmes, gramophone record sales, andBBC broadcasts, this article demonstrates that Elgar continuedto enjoy estimable popularity after 1918. The article also considersthe way in which Elgar came to be seen as an archetype of ‘Englishness’and ‘Edwardianism’ in music. With a legacy of virulentattacks on the composer's ‘complacency’ and ‘jingoism’,critical attention by the 1930s had been refocused onto a perceivedrural nostalgia within Elgar's music. This atavism complementedinterwar visions of the Edwardian period as a prelapsarian ‘goldenage’. The implications of these changing perspectiveson Elgar are twofold. They can be seen to have laid the foundationsfor our ‘mature’ understanding of Elgar's life andwork; and they suggest that our views of the interwar reactionagainst the past might require profound and wide-ranging revision. ^*I am grateful to Professor Hugh Cunningham, Dr Peter Martland,and Dr David Turley for their comments on an earlier versionof this article.     

Mass Politics and the Techniques of Leadership: The Promise and Perils of Propaganda in Weimar Germany

This paper traces the development of ideas about ‘professional’and ‘scientific’ publicity during the Weimar era,and their gradual absorption by mainstream politicians and officialsfrom the late 1920s onwards. The unprecedented wartime effortsto influence domestic morale and the scandalous revelationsof misinformation afterwards greatly increased popular awarenessof the ability of élites to manipulate public opinion,and generated intense interest in the problems of communicatingwith mass publics. Nowhere was this fascination greater thanin Germany, where many attributed their defeat primarily tosuperior enemy propaganda. The result was a wide-ranging postwardiscourse about the power of this modern ‘weapon’and its unavoidability as a part of modern political and commerciallife. Far from learning the so-called ‘lessons of thewar’, government self-representation efforts were steadilycriticized by journalists and advertisers as both quantitativelyand qualitatively inadequate. Whereas most republicans regarded‘propaganda’ as mendacious and unstatesmanlike,many of the radical parties’ publicity efforts clearlyreflected the basic tenets of the concurrent propaganda discourse,in particular the emphasis on emotional appeal and ritualisticsymbols. During the crisis of the early 1930s, amidst the visiblesuccess of the Nazis’ advertising-inspired campaigning,the spread of this discourse across the political spectrum helpedto hollow out democratic conceptualizations of leadership andpublic opinion from the very centre of Weimar political life.     

'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

This essay, based on primary sources from the privately-runInternationale FKK-Bibliothek and a growing body of secondaryliterature, examines some of the myths and misconceptions regardingthe fate of naturism in the Third Reich. It shows that despiteGoering's decree of 3 March 1933, which described the ‘nakedculture movement’ as ‘one of the greatest dangersfor German culture and morality’, naturism did not cometo an abrupt halt after the Machtergreifung. While officialhistories of German naturism talk proudly of the movement's‘persecution’ and ‘non-violent resistance’,there was little concerted effort to close down naturist associationsor to arrest individual activists. In fact, without a definitiveorder from the Führer, Germany's naturists existed in asemi-legal limbo for much of the 1930s. Many National Socialistsregarded the clothes-free lifestyle with contempt, but therewere elements within the Nazi state—and particularly theSS—which could see significant benefits from celebrating‘the instinct for bodily nobility and its beauty in ourVolk’. A mutual desire to de-eroticize nudity helped cementthe bond between Heydrich, Himmler and naturist leaders. Asa result, German Freikörperkultur passed some of its mostimportant landmarks in the years of Nazi rule, including itsvery first book with photographs in full colour, a full-lengthfeature film, and a new, more permissive Bathing Law. Thus whileGeorge Mosse's Nationalism and Sexuality claims the Nazis ‘forbadenudism after their accession to power’, a closer examinationof the fate of naturism after 1933 reveals a more complex picture,which serves to highlight not only the limits of the régime'stotalitarian aspirations, but also the naturist movement's owndisparate and problematic heritage.     

'Is he still alive, or long since dead?': Loss, Absence and Remembrance in Nuremberg, 1945-1956

This article uses the search for the ‘missing’ Wehrmachtsoldiers in the 1950s as a prism through which to explore theways in which we might insert the notion of trauma into ourunderstanding of West Germany's status as a postwar society.In seeking to point out the connections between the ways inwhich ‘ordinary Germans’ suffered during and afterthe war on the one hand, and the inability of post-war WestGerman society to ‘confront’ the crimes of the paston the other, it argues that the traumatizing impact of warhas to be considered alongside the ideological and politicalnecessities of the Cold War and reconstruction if we are tounderstand why West German society failed to place the Holocaustat the centre of its memorial culture in the immediate post-waryears. Moreover, in pointing to the Lutheran church as a keysite of memorial politics in the post-war era, it argues forthe integration of a study of religious narratives, mentalitiesand discourses into an understanding of the evolution of thecommemorative practices of the 1950s which has hitherto beenshaped by an excessively one-sided focus on secular sites andnarratives.     

From Propaganda to Modernization: Media Policy and Media Audiences under National Socialism

To date, historians have worked on the assumption that NationalSocialism used the media to powerful propaganda effect. Yetat an early stage a few voices, especially within Anglo-Saxonscholarship, questioned whether the process was so direct. Increasinglythe individual media have been examined, both technically andin terms of their public the reactions they provoked. This essayexamines how the media can be said to have modernized underNational Socialism, and how newspaper readers, radio listenersand cinema audiences reacted to the development of the media.There were major differences. Radio was conceived as a mediumfor music and entertainment; new formats were developed in responseto listeners turning to programmes from abroad, so that Germanradio could no longer keep a monopoly on information. The majorityof feature films were melodramas and light entertainment, andalthough many carried a ‘message’, the cinema wasfundamentally a commercial, non-political sphere. Newspapersremained relatively conservative in presentation. The presswas largely concentrated in the hands of the party, so informationwas highly controlled, and due to difficulties of productionin wartime they became increasingly unattractive, and by 1942were trusted by few readers. The corpus of the media generallybecame technically more efficient, and sought to please itsgrowing audience. Total control of the media by the politicalleaders was not achieved. Particular elements, such as war films,or the ‘Wehrmacht Request Show’, had memorable success.Agenda setting by the media planners put certain key politicalideas into the forefront, and they were able to disseminatekey symbols and rituals of National Socialism. The media werebut one of many agents used, though, to foster political loyalty.The régime also, and more importantly, achieved thisby using existing attitudes, and through its permanent threatof violence towards the population, whom they also seduced withmaterial ‘treats’. It emerges that it is both possibleand helpful in studying the development of the media to examineit as a process of modernization in the media, in their organizationaland technical structures. This process was however underminedwherever in German society anti-modernist ideology and practicespersisted or fought back.     

Not Just a 'Dating Game': Origins of the Holocaust at Auschwitz in the Light of Witness Testimony

Historians now view Auschwitz as marginal to the origins ofthe Holocaust. In a surprising volte-face from a generationago, Historians now accept what can be called a ‘transformationnarrative’. That is, most accounts cast Auschwitz, notas first mover, but as late comer to the destruction of theEuropean Jews. This fits a much larger historiographical movementattributing the Final Solution to a local initiative withina disorganized, even ‘debureaucratized’ German state.Once again, this departs completely from, say, Raul Hilbergor Hannah Arendt, who defined the Holocaust as a crime uniqueto modern, organized society. Thus, in the case of Auschwitz,what some have come to ridicule as the ‘dating game’—thealmost obsessive attempt to identify a precise microchronologyof the final solution—has larger implications. It cutsto the heart of whether we see the Holocaust as a crime of amodern, dynamic industrial state or as a haphazard initiative. This article uses testimony from the three most relevant professionalgroups that built the genocidal factories of Auschwitz to reassessthe current consensus. Contrary to the ‘transformationnarrative’, little evidence supports the argument thatthe SS and its independent contractors were somehow divorcedfrom efforts to mechanize genocide from Minsk to Lublin to Oswiecimin the autumn of 1941. The testimony as a whole—drawnfrom civilian managers, SS architects, and prisoner-engineers—leaveslittle doubt that the new crematoria of Birkenau were intendedfrom the beginning (that is, from October 1941) as gas chambers.The ‘transformation narrative’, ironically enough,finds support in only one account: the internally contradictoryand almost desperate testimony given by one former SS architectat his own trial. To put a fine point on it, the ‘transformationnarrative’ hews most closely to a dubious defence narrativegiven by a perpetrator, in which neither his lawyers nor hisfellow defendants placed much credence.     

'More carrot than stick', British Economic Warfare and Spain, 1941-1944

During the Second World War, economic factors became a centralaspect of Spain's relations to both Britain and Nazi Germany.In 1940, when the Franco regime was on the brink of joiningthe war on the side of the Axis, Britain tried to use Spain’sdependence on imports from the west to convince Franco to retainhis country's neutrality. Although, at the time, British ‘economicappeasement’ was not a major factor in the failure ofGerman-Spanish negotiations, it contributed to Spain's verygradual detachment from Nazi Germany over subsequent years.Between1941 and 1944, the focus of British policy towards Spain movedfrom keeping the country out of the war to restricting the servicesSpain rendered to the German war economy. Franco's sympathiesfor the Nazi regime and the economic and financial benefitsof continuing trade with Germany made British and US economicwarfare activities however only a partial success.     

DDR Museum Berlin

In the summer of 2006 a new permanent exhibition on East Germanhistory opened its doors on the banks of the river Spree, justa frog's jump away from the Berliner Dom and the slowly disappearingPalast der Republik. The DDR Museum¹ sets out to show all facetsof life and growing up in the German Democratic Republic inbasement premises measuring just 400m². The exhibition is composed of seventeen thematic areas, rangingfrom earnest topics such as ‘border’, ‘statesecurity’ and ‘construction’ to the more diverting‘fashion’, ‘consumer goods’ and ‘holidays’.The whole space is designed as a miniature pre-fabricated housingdevelopment, the facades of which incorporate display cabinetsand drawers inviting visitors to explore their contents. Eachthematic area is given roughly the same space, and consequentlythe GDR's dozen or so popular bands get about as much room asthe Stasi.     

Indicting Auschwitz? The Paradox of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial

During the late 1950s, the German authorities in the publicprosecutor's office of the state of Hesse in Frankfurt beganto organize what would become the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial1963–5 of twenty people alleged to have been responsiblefor some of the worst crimes at the Auschwitz concentrationcamp. The trial opened with a seven-hundred-page indictment,an extraordinary document that included the testimony of twohundred and fifty-two witnesses (both survivors and former SSofficers) and a two-hundred-page history of the camp writtenby experts. In the mind of its principal organizer, the trialwas to put the entire ‘Auschwitz Complex’ beforethe court. This concept, ‘Auschwitz on trial’, isat the core of German public confrontation with the Nazi pastin the 1960s. But legal constraints, I argue, created the paradoxical situationin which the prosecution initially attempted to put Auschwitzon trial, but instead had to use some of the conventions ofthe Nazi regime in order to show the personal initiative ofthe defendants and convict them of perpetrating murder. By elucidatingthe origins and exigencies of the West German penal code, andby examining both the historical background section and thecharges against the suspects in the 1963 indictment, I showthat the decision to use the German penal code for prosecutingNazi crimes created a paradoxical situation for the state attorney'soffice in Frankfurt: they had to use Nazi orders and regulationsto show that the defendants had acted above and beyond the ordersof the SS in Berlin.     

The Medieval Colonization of Central Europe as a Problem of World History and Historiography

The author of this article asks two main questions. First, whatwas the nature of the so-called medieval colonization in theeastern half of central Europe? Secondly, which factors decidedthat in the second half of the nineteenth and in the twentiethcentury, during the era of a rising modern nationalism and imperialism,colonization became the—not always conscious—toolof manipulation in the fight for so-called ‘historic rights’in certain territories and the battle for the ‘forgingof nations’. In particular, in German historiography themyth of medieval colonization was born, which had very littlein common with medieval reality. Even German peasants were supposedto have marched East, not in order to seek out better livingconditions, as one Flemish song went, but to subject for Germany‘empty space’ in the barbaric East. At the sametime, the author presents the thesis that several ideas aboutthe topic of medieval colonization developed under the influenceof the colonization of North America, especially in California—contemporaryto many of these German scholars. This found its expressionin the terminology used, in numerous comparisons, and even inthe fundamental suggestion that German law legitimized the Germanclaim for almost the whole of central and eastern Europe. Thebasic conviction among German historians and politicians wasthat these territories should belong to the Empire under thesame conditions as India ‘belonged’ to the English,and Algeria to the French.     

What Did You Do in the War, Mutti? Courageous Women, Compassionate Commanders, and Stories of the Second World War

In the mid–1950s, West Germans were ready to fight theSecond World War again, this time at the cinema. This paperanalyses Kinder, Mütter und ein General, a war film inwhich a band of courageous women pushed to the eastern frontin March 1945 to bring home their sons who had only just puton Wehrmacht uniforms. The paper concludes that the film indicateshow West Germans had come to understand the past of the wara decade after the shooting stopped, and how memories of thewar also shaped contemporary discussions of rearmement, therehabilitation of the Wehrmacht, and the redefinition of ‘awomen's place’ after the defeat of Fascism.     

A Matter of Foreign Policy: 'Final Solution' and 'Final Victory' in Nazi Germany

The primacy of foreign policy in Nazi Germany has been debatedfor decades. This article seeks not to re-open an old debate,but focuses on the two big aims of Nazi policy: ‘FinalVictory’ and ‘Final Solution’. In order toanalyse their relationship, they are identified as war aims;there follows an examination of both the role of the war inNazi doctrine and Hitler's role in decision-making in general.It can be shown that Hitler's original war plan saw ‘FinalVictory’ as a prerequisite for the ‘Final Solution’,but that from August 1941 the implementation of the ‘FinalSolution’ followed the intention of achieving ‘FinalVictory’ through the extermination of the European Jews.‘Final Victory’ and the ‘Final Solution’thus appear as goals which illuminate the primacy of foreignpolicy in Nazi Germany.     

The Professors' Africa: Economists, the Elections of 1907, and the Legitimation of German Imperialism

German economists led by Gustav Schmoller created the KolonialpolitischesAktionskomité (colonial-political action committee) duringthe so-called ‘colonial crisis’ of 1906–1907to promote the German colonial empire at a time when it wassuffering much scandal and criticism. Widely esteemed and enjoyingthe appearance of non-partisanship, they worked closely withthe government of Bernhard von Bülow during the electionsof 1907, arguing that colonial empire was economically and politicallyindispensable and that its financial burdens were bearable.Straddling a position between the economic imperialism of manyGerman liberals and the settler colonialism prevalent in conservativeand radical nationalist circles, they helped secure a middleground that enabled the Bülow bloc and developed many ideasfor colonial reform that came into currency during the Dernburgera (1906–1910). Through lecturing, the mass disseminationof relatively high-quality literature, and the demarcation ofthe new academic sub-discipline known as Kolonialwissenschaft(colonial science), a potent complex of liberal-nationalistambitions was fused with a new ‘scientific’ colonialismthat helped redefine and legitimate a German civilizing missionin Africa and forge an imperialist ideology that gained a nationalaudience.     

Black Sailors on Red Clydeside: Rioting, Reactionary Trade Unionism and Conflicting Notions of 'Britishness' Following the First World War

The riot at Glasgow harbour in January 1919 was the first ina wave of rioting around Britain's ports in 1919. Violence wastriggered by increased job competition in the merchant navyat the end of the war. Seamen's unions fuelled animosity betweencompeting groups as they sought to protect white British accessto jobs by imposing a ‘colour’ bar on sailors fromracialized ethnic minorities. Many of the seamen targeted inthis way were British colonial subjects from Africa and theCaribbean. Black colonial sailors in Glasgow resisted attacksby white rioters and asserted their rights to employment asBritish subjects. The riot was connected to wider industrialunrest on Clydeside as leaders of the union campaign for a reducedworking week (to maintain full employment following demobilization)brought unskilled labour, including merchant seamen, into ageneral strike alongside skilled workers. Strike leaders, includingShinwell and Gallacher, linked the 40-hours movement to theseamen's unions’ protests against overseas labour by stressingthe common interests of both in preserving the job prospectsof (white) labour. The campaigns proved unsuccessful in theface of government fears over the revolutionary potential ofthe general strike and as the merchant shipping industry slidin to depression.     

The Annaberg as a German--Polish Lieu de Memoire

This essay analyses a fiercely contested transnational lieude mémoire in twentieth-century Polish—German history:the Annaberg. Historiography has thus far largely neglectedthe role played by this ‘holy mountain’ of UpperSilesia, a symbol that has stood at the heart of a number ofcompeting identity-forging narratives. The competition overthe Annaberg as a site for multiple collective memories occurredon three distinct but often overlapping levels: first betweennation-states, secondly between ideological camps, and thirdlybetween national- and local-level actors. Drawing on a substantialbody of primary sources, this article contributes both to thescholarly investigation of a political myth that cast a longshadow over German—Polish relations and to the growingacademic interest in transnational ‘realms of memory’.     

Barriers to 'US style' lean retailing: the case of Wal-Mart's failure in Germany

Wal-Mart's exit from the German market in 2006 after 10 yearsof attempting to achieve sustainable competitive advantage contributesan interesting case to the small but expanding literature on‘failure’ in international investment. The workon the disinvest decision in all its forms has been criticalto a re-conceptualization of the international investment processas dynamic rather than static, linear and inexorable. An importantsegment of the work on investment and disinvestment as dynamicprocesses focuses on the environment in which investment anddisinvestment decisions evolve. While the environment of thehost country market has begun to be examined, the market environmentof the country in which the retail transnational corporation(TNC) originates also affects the international disinvestmentprocess. To explore this ‘home country effect’,I examine the resources Wal-Mart brought into the German marketand their ability to use those resources in the German context.Wal-Mart's resources were shaped by the market governance regimein which the firm evolved, and not insignificantly, over whichit had and has influence. Within this theoretical frame, Wal-Mart'sreliance on the resources of network dominance and autonomousaction that made for its success in the USA contributed to unsuccessfulstrategies in the German retailing market.