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.     

'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.     

'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.     

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.     

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.     

Relegating Nazism to the Past: Expressions of German Guilt in 1945 and Beyond

This article builds on a research thesis that confronting moralfeelings is essential to an understanding of the catastrophicpolitical success of Nazism in Germany and the way Germany developedafter its defeat in 1945. This research into a ‘moralhistory’ of Nazi Germany and its postwar echoes is carriedout through an interdisciplinary approach that, in essence,combines historical with philosophical analysis. In the immediatepostwar period, Germany continued to be stamped by discussionscentred on moral guilt arising from its Nazi past and from theHolocaust in particular. The article analyses the differentways this guilt was discussed in 1945 and how these discussionsechoed what can be described as a form of Nazi morality. Thearticle uses three main sources to explore these issues: first,the writings and interrogations with the Nazi lawyer and Governor-Generalof Nazi-occupied Poland, Hans Frank; second, the memoirs ofHitler's secretary Traudl Junge; and third, the essay The Questionof German Guilt by Karl Jaspers.     

The Six Fevrier 1934 and the 'Survival' of the French Republic

The Paris riots of the six février 1934 are rememberedchiefly as the event that provided the initial spark and theeventual rationale for the anti-fascist Popular Front. However,most French historians have tended to downplay the importanceof the riots themselves, arguing that the Republic was not underserious threat, and that the Left at the time greatly exaggeratedthe danger. Indeed, the fact that the regime ‘survived’these events has often been cited as proof of its resilience,of France’s deep-rooted ‘democratic political culture’,and its inbuilt ‘immunity’ to fascism. This historiographicalreview argues that the standard interpretation of the six févrieris deeply flawed, especially in its tendency to deduce the intentionsof the actors from the outcome of the events. The six févrierconstituted a serious challenge to the regime, and created adangerously fluid situation in which a variety of ‘outcomes’became possible. It should be analysed not as a discrete andtemporally circumscribed event but as a key moment in an ongoingprocess of political radicalization on the French Right.     

Deutsch als Weltsprache? Franz Thierfelder, the Deutsche Akademie in Munich and the Promotion of the German Language Abroad, 1923-1945

The Deutsche Akademie (DA) in Munich was founded in the contextof a general upsurge in cultural diplomacy in Germany afterthe First World War and it was the precursor of today's GoetheInstitute. After a difficult start, by the early 1930s the DAhad become the leading institution in the promotion of the Germanlanguage abroad. The emergence of the DA's language policy wasclosely intertwined with the general development of German culturaldiplomacy, which was largely financed by the AuswärtigesAmt but executed by private associations. It was also influencedby the discussions in the 1920s about the role of language inshaping German national identity, by contemporary developmentsin German linguistics and language teaching, and by the discourseof the socalled ‘conservative revolution’. FranzThierfelder, secretary-general of the DA, managed to forge thesedevelopments into a coherent argument as to why Germany shouldintensify its language policy, centre it around the DA, anddirect it mainly towards the Balkan countries. The languagepolicy of the DA remained largely undisturbed by the Nazi seizureof power until the outbreak of war, even though the emphasiswas now on race rather than language as the determining factorin German national identity. The reason for this was, firstly,that the cultural diplomacy of the Auswärtiges Amt andits private institutions such as the DA continued to be dominatedfor some time by non-Nazis and, secondly, that Germany's culturaldiplomacy was dictated more by the constraints and dynamicsof international politics and by economic necessities than byideology. It was only after the outbreak of war that the expansionof the DA's language programme became closely linked to theracially motivated ‘new order’ for a Europe underNazi rule.     

Aby Warburg's Hamburg Comedy: Wilhelmine Culture from the Perspective of a Pioneering Cultural Historian

This article examines an unpublished play written by Aby Warburg(1866–1929), entitled Hamburg Conversations on Art: HamburgComedy, 1896. The play offers a glimpse into Warburg's viewson modern art and into his thinking on the various processesof modernization. It demonstrates how his enthusiasm for innovativeart forms emerged, in part, as an expression of his rebellionagainst the religious, social and professional conventions ofthe German–Jewish economic élite into which hewas born. As with many of his generation, Warburg claimed socialand cultural progress under the banner of artistic innovation.The play also provides a focus for a discussion of the waysin which Warburg's interest in modern art was closely alliedwith pioneering research into the role of symbolism and artin European history. To this end, the article explores Warburg'sconcern about the prospect of a culture in which symbolic andmythical thinking was replaced by a technology that destroyedhumanity's contemplative bond with the world. It also demonstratesthat Warburg's perspective on social and cultural modernizationcombined seemingly different attitudes: it blended the future-orientatedoptimism of an urban, liberal and cosmopolitan outlook withthe nostalgic pessimism of an ardent patriot whose life wasshaped by traditional values and who was uneasy about the increasinglyrationalized and materialistic society in which he lived. Inconclusion, the article suggests that this attitude was notuncommon among the Bürgertum and points to the difficultiesof conceiving of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’in Imperial Germany in terms of mutual exclusivity.     

Editorial: Making an Impact

We promised in our last editorial (Puga and Wrigley, 2004) toreturn with news of the Journal's performance in the ISI citation‘impact factor’ rankings. That is to say, to givereaders the opportunity to gauge how the Journal is beginningto fare in the ‘market place for ideas’. June 2005saw the release of the ISI 2004 Journal Citation Reports (JCR)—thefirst year Journal of Economic Geography appears in the JCR.The result (Table 1) is remarkable. On the basis of citation‘impact factor’, Journal of Economic Geography entersthe rankings as No. 1     

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.     

H.G. Wells and the New Liberalism

This article offers a new interpretation of H.G. Wells's politicalthought in the Edwardian period and beyond. Scholars have emphasisedhis socialism at the expense of his commitment to liberalism,and have misread his novel The New Machiavelli as an anti-Liberaltract. Wells spent much effort in the pre-1914 period in thequest for a ‘new Liberalism’, and did not believethat socialists should compete directly with the Liberal Partyfor votes. It was this latter conviction that lay behind hismuch misunderstood dispute with the Fabian Society. His politicalsupport for Churchill was one sign of his belief in the compatibilityof liberalism and socialism, in which he was far from uniqueat the time. He also engaged, somewhat idiosyncratically, withthe ‘servile state’ concept of Hilaire Belloc. Althoughhe did not articulate his Liberal identity with complete consistency,he did so with increasing intensity as the First World War approached.This helps explain why key New Liberal politicians includingChurchill, Lloyd George and Masterman responded to his ideassympathetically. The extent of engagement between Wells andthe ‘New Liberalism’ was such that he deserves tobe considered alongside Green, Ritchie, Hobson and Hobhouseas one of its prophets.     

'Christ's Kingdom in Scotland': Scottish Presbyterianism, Social Reform, and the Edwardian Crisis

This article examines the response of Scottish Presbyterianreformers to the socioeconomic and political dimensions of the‘Edwardian Crisis’. For such individuals the circumstancesof the early twentieth century, despite the undoubted difficultiesthey posed, offered the opportunity to bring about a modernversion of the ‘godly commonwealth’, with the principalmeans of realizing this being Christianized social reform. Thearticle focuses on how the ‘social problem’ wasanalysed; the challenge of socialism; the solutions offered;and the ultimate fate of the ‘social gospel’ ¹I am grateful to the British Academy for a Research and TravelExpenses Grant which enabled me to visit Scottish archives andlibraries; and to my colleagues David Nash and Paul O'Flinnand this journal's editors and anonymous referees for theirconstructive comments on earlier drafts. The quote is from JohnW. Gulland MP, Christ's Kingdom in Scotland or the Social Missionof the United Free Church (Edinburgh, 1906).     

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’.     

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.     

MacDonald's Parties: The Labour Party and the 'Aristocratic Embrace', 1922-31

The article tests the claim that certain Labour MPs and ministersin the 1920s succumbed to an ‘aristocratic embrace’.It begins with a short account of debates in the early LabourParty over social mixing, which culminated in the 1924 disputeover the wearing of Court Dress by some Labour ministers. Theextent of ‘embrace’ is assessed through the examinationof who wore Court Dress (and why), who was offered and acceptedhonours, and of patterns of residence, income and wealth, andparticipation in London Society, measured by club membershipsand appearances in the Court & Social columns of The Times.The article concludes by examining the usefulness of the ideaof ‘aristocratic embrace’ in explaining the defectionof J.R. MacDonald and others from the Labour Party in 1931.     

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.     

From Barbarism to Religion: Church History and the Enlightened Narrative in Germany

The subject of this essay is the historical vision of the GermanCatholic Enlightenment as seen in the work of Michael IgnazSchmidt, a Catholic priest and author of the eleven-volume Historyof the Germans (1778–1793). A proper acknowledgement ofSchmidt's career helps us revise the standard account of Germanhistoricism and historical practice in the eighteenth century,and also sheds light on the place of religion in the GermanEnlightenment. Schmidt wrote a thoroughly modern ‘historyof manners’ that was indebted both to Voltaire and toRobertson. Yet his work passed into obscurity largely becausehe focused on the Holy Roman Empire and the Imperial Church—thetwo great casualties of the Napoleonic passage. Schmidt's viewof the Reformation, and, more importantly, of the history ofthe pre-Reformation German national Church, stands out in theprominence it assigns the Church as part of the history of thedevelopment of German manners. Schmidt's account throws intoquestion the common view in the history of the German ‘nation’that Germany could not be accorded the normal attributes ofa state and existed only as a ‘cultural nation’.The essay addresses the German problem of bi-confessionalism,and Schmidt's awareness of developments in Protestant theologyin the eighteenth century. While this paper does not try todeal comprehensively with all these issues, the essay showshow the agenda of reformist religion, national history, andthe Enlightened vision of Europe's Christian past coalescedin this unjustly forgotten work.     

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.     

F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton, and the 'American Plan' for Resolving Britain's Constitutional Crises, 1903-1921

Frederick Scott Oliver was a Scottish businessman, writer, politicalpundit, and friend of many leading Conservatives. Distressedby the serious constitutional problems confronting Britain atthe turn of the century, he proposed solutions based on theideas and methods of the founders of the United States of Americain the late eighteenth century. These notions were set forthin Oliver's biography, Alexander Hamilton (1906), and helpedinspire the constitutional settlement brought by Milner's ‘kindergarten’in South Africa in 1910. Subsequent attempts by Oliver and hisRound Table associates, however, to implement this ‘AmericanPlan’ to resolve constitutional crises over Ireland justbefore and during the course of the First World War were largelyfutile. Austen Chamberlain and others failed to share Oliver'senthusiasm for such idealistic nostrums as constitutional conventionsand federalism as possible means to maintain unity within Britainand the empire. They were regarded simply as too American.