The Tolsdorff Trials in Traunstein: Public and Judicial Attitudes to the Wehrmacht in the Federal Republic, 1954-60

This article uses the prosecution of former GeneralleutnantTheodor Tolsdorff before the Landgericht Traunstein on threeseparate occasions (June 1954, September 1958 and May/June 1960)as a means of examining both press and judicial attitudes towardsthe Wehrmacht in the Federal Republic from 1954 to 1960. Whatis most surprising about the case is that, while the press reactionsto the first hearing in June 1954 were uniformly critical ofthe guilty verdict, the first retrial in September 1958 provokedattacks on the accused in newspapers, and the abandonment ofthe case under the provisions of the Amnesty Law provoked intensecriticism of the court. The reasons for the differing reactionsin June 1954 and September 1958 are not only to be sought inthe fact that the 1958 verdict came shortly after the closeof the Ulmer Einsatzgruppenprozeβ, but rather in the upsurgein anti-militarism which occurred between September 1954 andFebruary 1955 and the effects on public opinion of the 1957Schörner trial in Munich. When examined against the backgroundof the 1957 Schörner trial and the 1959 Manteuffel trial,the Tolsdorff case indicates not only that attitudes towardsthe Wehrmacht became much more critical during the second halfof the 1950s, but also that these three ‘generals’trials' were part of a broader pattern of proceedings for ‘crimesof the final period’ which played an important psychologicalpart in paving the way for a more honest confrontation withthe mass murder committed during the Third Reich.     

Party Politics and the Provincial Press in Early Twentieth Century England: The Case of the South West

Based on the evidence of Devon and Cornwall, politicians continuedto regard the provincial press as highly influential in determiningtheir readers' party political affiliations well into the twentiethcentury. Until at least 1914, many of the leading local andregional newspapers were owned by prominent local politicians.After 1918, especially following the amalgamation of the twomain Conservative and Liberal papers, local politicians feltkeenly their lack of a reliable source of press support. Thecost of funding a party political newspaper became too highfor all but the richest politicians. Moreover, the status ofthe provincial press was increasingly undermined by improvedrail communications, allowing the national press to competeeven in farthest Cornwall. The wireless also reduced the importanceof the provincial press from the late 1920s. The real political influence of the provincial press is impossibleto assess with any certainty. Newspapermen believed that, despitethe often substantial expenditure by politicians, a stronglyparty political paper was more likely to alienate non-partisanreaders, leading to neither political nor commerical success.Modern research also suggests that partisan newspapers are probablyonly partially successful, doing more to reinforce their readers'existing opinions than to convert non-believers. ^*I am grateful to the University of Reading Library for permissionto quote from the Lord and Lady Astory papers, and to the WesternMorning News for permission to quote from their records, whichare deposited at the West Devon County Record Office.     

'Stop the Flapper Vote Folly': Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail, and the Equalization of the Franchise 1927-28

This essay re-examines the Daily Mail's campaign in 1927–8against the Baldwin government's decision to equalize the franchiseby lowering the female voting age to 21. It argues that theMail's hostility to the ‘flapper vote’ was largelya product of the passionate anti-socialism of its proprietor,Lord Rothermere, and not, as has been suggested, the culminationof a decade of anti-feminism. Rothermere was convinced thatyoung women would vote overwhelmingly for the Labour Party andentrench it in government for a generation. But attacks on the‘flapper’ in 1927–8 were generally confinedto the paper's editorial and political columns, and contrastedwith the much more positive portrayal of young women that hadbeen typical of the Mail's output since 1918. The example ofthe Daily Express, which supported franchise equalization, isused to demonstrate that it was Rothermere's idiosyncratic politicalpinions, rather than the ‘typical’ anti-feminismof the Conservative press, that explained the Mail's stance.The article concludes that the gender discourse of interwarnewspapers has been unfairly stereotyped by historians, andthat media hostility to young, unmarried women in these yearshas been exaggerated.     

History, Memory, and Identity in Modern Singapore: Testimonies from the Urban Margins

In 2006–2007, I interviewed elderly Singaporeans on theirexperiences of resettlement from an urban kampong (village)to emergency public housing after a great fire in 1961. I learnedmuch about the lives of semiautonomous dwellers in an unauthorizedsettlement and the individual and social transformation followingtheir rehousing. My informants also highlighted what the experiencesmeant to them and their identity in a modern city-state. Thispaper treats the testimonies as both source and social memoryand seeks to avoid the essentialism into which many social historians,oral history practitioners, and memory scholars have fallenin their approach toward the craft. As a source of social history,when used in conjunction with other historical sources, thereminiscences are patently useful for understanding the roleof public housing in transforming a marginal population intoan integrated citizenry. This enables the writing of a new socialhistory of postwar Singapore that departs from the discursiveofficial accounts of urban kampong life and of the 1961 inferno.At the same time, the oral history also underlines powerfulsocial and political influences on individual memory, beingmarked by nostalgia for the kampong and ambivalence toward theimagined character of younger Singaporeans. Statements on therumors of government-inspired arson in the 1961 calamity, however,constitute a significant countermyth in contemporary society,revealing a more critical side to the social memory.     

Charismatic Legitimation and Bureaucratic Rule: The NSDAP in the Third Reich, 1933-1945

This article deals with the history of the Nazi Party's officeof the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Heß, which after Heß'sflight on 10 May 1941 was renamed the Party Chancellery andled by Martin Bormann. It evaluates the structures and functionsof this important party office which had the exclusive rightto control government legislation. The Deputy Führer'sstaff was established before 1935/36. It consisted of severaloffices which influenced nearly all processes of legislationand tried to introduce Nazi ideology into all sectors of Germansociety. This was done by corresponding intensively with ministerialbureaucracy. Although the staff of the Deputy Führer andof the Party Chancellery acted in a very bureaucratic manner,the article argues that Max Weber's concept of ‘bureaucraticrule’ is not appropriate for analysing the radicalizationof the Nazi régime throughout the Second World War becausethis Weberian ideal type tends to neglect social practices.The same is true for Weber's concept of ‘charismatic rule’which only offers fruitful insights into the social relationsbetween Hitler and his followers.     

A New Liberal Descent: The 'Labourer' Trilogy by Lawrence and Barbara Hammond

In 1906, citing the complexities of what he would subsequentlyterm the ‘Great Society’, the New Liberal GrahamWallas called for ‘a fresh approach to the question: What,under modern conditions constitutes history?’ A burgeoninggroup of historians, including among others R. H. Tawney, theWebbs, J. H. Clapham and W. J. Ashley, responded to this needby establishing economic and social history as a legitimatefield or historical study. However, beginning with The VillageLabourer in 1911 followed by The Town Labourer in 1917 and TheSkilled Labourer in 1919, Barbara and Lawrence Hammond completeda historical enquiry that more than any other of its time definedfor progressives an answer to Wallas' query. This article examinesthe Hammonds' unique achievement in terms of its contributionto New Liberal politics and to the growing field of economicand social history. It sets their overtly political and literaryapproach against the growing trend towards professionalizationamongst contemporary historians and compares their radical treatmentof industrialization to the orthodox Liberal conclusions ofnineteenth century Whig historians. The groundwork is thus laidfor an exploration into the implicit assumptions that definedthe shape and character of the Hammonds' New Liberal descent;an exploration that enhances our understanding of both Englishprogressivism and the development of social history as a legitimateapproach to studying the past.     

Historia, Antropologia, Y Fuentes Orales

Historia, Antropología y Fuentes Orales (HAYFO) is aSpanish-language journal for the study of oral data across diversedisciplinary traditions, such as history, anthropology, andsociology. The journal is edited by Asociación Historiay Fuente Oral, Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona,and Editorial Universidad de Granada. HAYFO first saw the lightin 1989 and is published biannually in Spain. The thirty-seventh issue of the journal is an exciting mix ofarticles with a variety of theoretical and empirical merits.This issue is divided into four main sections. The first sectionis entitled "Denouncement and opacity." This section     

Areopagitica,freedom of the press,and heterodox religion in the Holy Roman Empire

Milton’s Areopagitica (1644) is widely recognised as a foundational work in the philosophical history of the freedom of the press, although it had little impact upon first publication. However, in 1989 Leo Miller discovered an early German-language critique of Areopagitica from 1647, preserved among the papers of the Anglo-Prussian intelligencer Samuel Hartlib. The present article identifies the critic as the Brandenburg scholar Joachim Hübner, a key member of Hartlib’s networks. Available evidence suggests strongly that Hübner considered translating Milton’s tract in order to promote the printing and distribution of heterodox doctrines of spiritualist Christianity in the Holy Roman Empire. Using the short critique of Areopagitica as a springboard, this article demonstrates through biographical and contextual research the interrelations of political and religious cultures of the period, and that questions of freedom of the press were central to promoters of heterodox religious doctrine not only in England but also on the continent.     

The Italian American Experience In New Haven: Images and Oral Histories

Anthony V. Riccio's lavish new coffee table book, The ItalianAmerican Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories,provides a fascinating look at the experiences of Italian immigrantsand their children in one east coast community. The field ofimmigration history has certainly benefited from the wealthof oral histories collected from immigrants and their descendants.Ranging from Al Santoli's New Americans, an Oral History: Immigrantsand Refugees in the U. S. Today (1988) to works such as La Merica:Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (1985)     

法国的新闻史研究

20世纪40年代法国新闻界欣欣向荣,但是第二次世界大战不仅涂炭生灵,而且也使新闻界遭受严重的打击。战后的历史学家开始反省战争对人类带来的灾难,在他们看来,审视媒体的自由程度是这个重大的历史命题不可回避的主要手段。本文就是从这个角度入手,希望能呈现20世纪40年代以来法国历史学界阐释新闻史的方法和重点,以及历史学家们如何以历史学为阵地捍卫新闻自由乃至民主权利的。最后,新闻史学史的研究还与社会经济史学史的发展轨迹近乎一致。本文试图向读者呈现两种学科的交融与分裂。     

In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969

French and Burgess have added yet another book to the enormousliterature on the Space Race. Based partly on oral history interviewsand partly on written and e-mailed statements and other documents,In the Shadow of the Moon focuses on the American side of thesecond half of the Space Race. (French and Burgess dealt withthe first half of the Space Race in a previous work, Into thatSilent Sea.) Between March 1965 and July 1969, the U.S. launched fifteenmanned space missions. In four years and four months, NASA wentfrom     

Dealing with the King's Enemies: The Drafting of the Communist Party Dissolution Bill 1950

Abstract

The lawyers called upon to draft a Bill which, if enacted, could validly give effect to the promise of the successful Liberal–Country Party coalition in the 1949 federal election to outlaw the Communist Party of Australia, faced a difficult assignment. Their political instructors faced a dilemma: should the new government take a less confrontational approach to communist disruption of the economy and risk undermining the government's popular support, or should it press ahead with the promised ban and risk having the High Court of Australia invalidate it? In a process in which the politics of pragmatism gave way to Cold War ideology, the choice of the latter path led to failure.     

The 1948 Belcher Affair and Lynskey Tribunal

Although the Belcher affair was one of the biggest cases ofpolitical corruption in twentieth-century Britain, the scandaland resultant judicial inquiry have received little attentionin political histories of the 1940s due to their lack of electoralimpact. This outcome was not apparent to contemporary politicalcommentators. The allegations were serious and elements of theConservative Party were willing to use them to smear the Labourgovernment. The government successfully defused the scandalby appointing a judicial inquiry to investigate the allegations.They hoped this would dispel rumours of widespread corruption.However, it had the unintended effect of scotching public debate.The allegations became sub judice, hindering the activitiesof the scandalmongers. Tedious press coverage of the tribunalhearings bored many voters, who interpreted the scandal in linewith their existing beliefs.     

The Embers of Hiroshima: From Author to Subject in a Transnational Oral History Collaboration

This paper examines an international oral history collaborationinvolving the "translation" of the American book, Atomic Fragments:A Daughter's Questions, by Mary Palevsky, into the Japanesedocumentary film, Memories of the Trinity Bomb, directed byYoshihiko Muraki. The author utilized oral history and personalnarrative to chronicle her inquiry into the legacy of the atomicbomb in the lives of its creators. Japanese scholar, KayokoYoshida, translated Palevsky's summary of Atomic Fragments intoJapanese for Muraki, working with the filmmaker throughout theprocess. For the film, the author conducted interviews withManhattan Project scientists and was interviewed in sites ofpersonal and historical significance. This paper explores themethodological challenges underlying three essential featuresof this transnational project: the transformation of audience,from American to Japanese; the transformation of medium, frombook to film; the transformation of identity,from researcherand author of a book to subject of a film.     

'We've never had a voice': memory construction and the children of the harkis (1962-1991)

When riots broke out in the Bias Camp east of Bordeaux in May1975, few in France had heard of the harkis, the Algerian auxiliarieswho fought for the French during the Algerian War of Independence(1954–62). This began to change, however, as the rapidlyspreading protests instigated by their children garnered increasingmedia coverage. Seeking to end their status as les oubliésde l'histoire, the children of the harkis sought recognitionfor the history of their parents, particularly the sacrificesthey had made for France and the suffering endured as a consequence.What is particularly interesting about this campaign is thatthe children of the harkis were not alone in this desire andin fact were relative latecomers to the harki activist scene.The years since the end of the Algerian War had witnessed arange of representations offered by a series of self-appointedspokespersons who, in the absence of direct testimony from withinthe harki community, and often serving their own objectives,took it upon themselves to speak on behalf of the harkis. Thisarticle seeks to analyse the relationship between these externalnarratives, put forward by actors including the Algerian andFrench governments, the former Muslim elite of colonial Algeria,French veterans and the pied-noir community and those offeredby the children of the harkis in order to illustrate some ofthe issues pertaining to the mobilization and transmission ofFrance's colonial past in a postcolonial context.     

The Genesis of the 1906 Trades Disputes Act: Liberalism, Trade Unions, and the Law

The Trades Disputes Act of 1906 occupies an important positionin the history of trade unionism, industrial relations, andlabour politics. Far less attention has been devoted to itsplace in the development of Liberal politics. Historians ofliberalism tend to portray the act as an uninteresting reversionto the pre-Taff Vale position and symptomatic merely of theparty's desire to placate labour. This article suggests thatexisting accounts of the Act's genesis place insufficient emphasison its Liberal origins and that arguments about trade unionlaw provide important insights into the character of the partyand its creed. The argument is in three parts. The first considersthe constraints on liberal legislators. The second investigatesthe meaning of the debates surrounding the Act's passage. Itrestores the Act to its proper intellectual context by recoveringthe variety of views about trade union law present in Edwardianliberalism. The last section uses these arguments to demonstrateboth the resilience of radicalism within the party and the emergenceof a novel social democratic progressivism. Only thus, it isclaimed, is it possible to understand the passage and meaningof the Act. * A number of people have helped in the preparation of thisarticle. I would like to thank David Armutage, Eugeruo Biagiru,Elizabeth Emens, Jon Lawrence, Nomi Levy, Alastair Reid, EmmaRothschild, Lisa Tiersen and Philip Waller I benefited greatlyfrom the comments of the anonymous referees and the assistanceof the editors of Twentieth Century British History. I owe aspecial debt of gratitude to David Cannadine, Peter Clarke andVictoria de Grazia.     

Location of Memory versus Space of Communication: Presses,Languages, and Education among Czernovitz Jews, 1918-1941

Abstract

The history of Czernovitz, chief city and former capital of Bukovina, has long been veiled in a mythology based largely on romanticized accounts. In order to understand the background to this city’s rich literary production better, we have evaluated the German-language press which flourished in Czernovitz during the interwar period, when the city remained an enclave of German-language culture, highly intellectual, and predominantly Jewish, long after Bukovina itself came under Romanian rule in 1918. In this article, we challenge the romantic mythology of Czernovitz, stressing the city’s function as a modern space of communication rather than a location of memory. Our research is based on press articles, contextualizing archival material and testimonies of contemporaries born between 1908 and 1936. Its underlying conceptual framework is Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the field of cultural production.     

The Joint Polish--German Commission for the Revision of School Textbooks and Polish Views of German History

The Joint Polish–German Commission for the Revision ofSchool Textbooks was set up in 1972, bringing together historiansfrom Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany in view of reopeninga scholarly dialogue after decades of almost complete noncommunication.Until the late 1980s, the commission played a prominent roleas a forum for cross-national discussions on Polish-German Beziehungsgeschichte,and most of the leading Polish experts in German history participatedin its proceedings. For the development of Polish historiographyon Germany the work of the commission seems to have been relevantin at least two respects. The commission's regular conferenceson controversial or methodologically complex issues of Polish-GermanBeziehungsgeschichte contributed, on the one hand, to defininga new agenda for Polish historiography on Germany. The interestin explicitly comparative approaches to German and Polish historyincreased, and the focus shifted from specifically ‘Polishinterests’ in German history to more general issues. Onthe other hand, these conferences provided Polish historianswith the opportunity to make their research more visible toGerman historians (even outside the field of specialised EastEuropeanists)—a fact that encouraged Polish historiographyon Germany to pursue more ambitious tasks.