Midterm Flashcards
Intentionalism
The argument that the Nazi regime was top-down. That Hitler had complete power and could control and everything that happened was premeditated and planned.
Hitler was a “strong dictator” fully in charge and worked at realizing plans that date back to the 1920s
Functionalism
This argument is the the regime was a bottom up model and everything was not planned.
Hitler was a “weak” dictator and rode the wave of initiatives made up by bureaucrats and on-site personnel.
Working toward the Fuhrer
Ian Kershaws model.
Refers to Werner Williams speech (feb 1934) that introduces “working toward the fuhrer”
How it works:
- Hitler suggests (or appears to propose) visions or big ideas
- Individuals or agencies present suggestions on how to implement these ideas - put them into practice
- Hitler - or others in leading positions - choose a suggestion retroactively approve of a practice already in place
How does Hitler benefit from “working towards the fuhrer”?
- Psychological
- Hitler was prone to delay work and decisions, let others worry about details and indulge in long periods of indolence, and then go into a work frenzy - Strategic
-competition among agencies and individuals vying for hitlers approval will prevent joint conspiracies against him - explains why no one tried to replace him - Ideological
- the mechanism conforms to the NS worldview that nature is an ongoing struggle for supremacy in which only the fittest survive - must be implemented in politics as well
*it is not only Hitler that benefits from this system the individuals/agencies involved in this competition can combine proposals/initiatives that “work towards the fuhrer” while also gaining power
Common and self interest are not exclusive
Kershaw’s model - what can the system survive with?
(i) fanaticism
(ii) loyalty
(iii) consent
(iv) accommodation
(v) indifference
(vi) silent apathy
(vii) active resistance
The system thrives off of i and ii but can survive with v and vi
In kershaws model the system calls for a lot of initiative from below - not fuelled by ideological fanaticism but how does this benefit me? If I can suggest ideas that hitler uses or does not alt-right reject I can improve my position and preserve self interest
- the more pressure the system undergoes the more radical and extreme the suggestions and solution become and are preferred
Roger Griffin
1948 - core ingredient of racism
Core ingredient or (lcd) of fascism past and present
“Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism”
Palingenesis
Rebirth from decadence
- “once we were great and united; it will be so again if we unite and remove everything that divided us and brought us down”
Implications:
-an essentialized collective identity (often based on race)
- a great past (mythicized view of history)
- a clearly identified enemy
William Jones
1746 - 94
Resides in India as a judge
First European to study Sanskrit texts
First to systematically explore the relationship b/w English and indo-Aryan languages
Sanskrit more perfect than Greek and more copious than latin - u cannot study all 3 w/o believing they came from a common source
Indo-European & PIE migration
Original indo-Europeans resided in Pontic-caspian steppe
In several ways over many centuries they migrated south and east (Iran and India) and west into Europe
In ancient Indian texts these people were “Aryan” - was a social designation to someone who was of a high social standing (has little to do with race)
* the word Aryan played no role in the any of the migrations to Europe
PIE migrations: see map (notes 2)
THE 3 R’s -Aryan
Racialization
The term Aryan is increasingly racialized. It starts to refer more as a race than to a family of languages
-aryans are seen as superior “noble” conquerors. They spread of their language and culture is based off on their racial superiority
-the explicit racism enters with the word Aryan when a hierarchy is established
Reduction
Aryan is increasingly reduced. It is no longer synonymous w indo-European but increasingly refers to more exclusively “Nordic” “Germanic” or in some cases “German”
*the term was originally not used to describe the migration west into Europe
Reversal
The term undergoes a geographic reversal
Aryans are no longer said to migrate south east westward but from the north-west eastward
Where exactly these “aryans” originated remained disputed
Reduction
Reversal
4 additional points (indo-European argument)
- Linguists discovered that older languages were more regular and systematic than younger languages.
What came earlier, the ancestral type or progenitor is better - Obvious similarity bw the develop,ent of languages and the changing understanding of the evolution of species that Darwin introduced roughly half a century later - comes as no surprise that the understanding of race will be similar as well
- In time Nazi discourse starts to use the word Aryan less and less and use “Nordic” - aryans refer to all white Europeans
- Debates of what the language family should be called:
Indo-European (1813 Thomas young)
Indo-Germanic (1823 - preferred by German scholars)
Aryan - (1819 by Friedrich Schlegel - problem is that these only refer to the indo-Iranian languages)
Japhetic (William jones - named after Noah’s son who repopulated Europe after the flood)
Hitler background
Born on Austrian - German boarder (Austrian side)
Drops out of school fails to get into art school
Ends up in Munich joins a Bavarian regiment at the outbreak of WW1
Followed Germany to many soldiers unexpected defeat
Retained by the army as a spy to report on radical political groups emerging in Munich
Joins DAP which is renamed NSDAP (national sozialistische arbeiterpartei)
Failed beer hall putsch attempt in 1923
Goes to jail and writes Mein Kampf
Hitlers Main Mein Kampf Arguments?
3 types of races: creative - maintaining- destroying
Aryans are the only culture-creating race because they possess idealism
Idealism: the willingness to sacrifice yourself for the greater good of your race
The basic relationship bw races throughout history is struggle
Hitler proposes a simple analogy bw races and species
- species cannot interbreed w/o creating infertile offspring
- hence races should not interbreed b/c it always results in a lessening of the quality of the superior race
Since aryans are the most superior race it has the most to lose
When dealing w lesser races you must subjugate and enslave them
Whatever culture exist in human history came about due to an original Aryan input
If the aryans were to be degenerate or disappear the world itself would be doomed
Darwin’s evolution theory and 2nd law of thermodynamics (wo any energy input all systems will collapse)
Everything that aryans are the Jews are the complete opposite. They are everything the Aryans are not
2 problems in mein kampf when talking about Jews as polar opposites from aryans
(i) large parts of the chapter talk about how well organized Jews are. They are conspiring to destroy the Aryan race and take over the world by organizing both capitalism and communism
- first Jews are said to be constitutively incapable of creating anything that goes beyond individual self interest, but then are painted as master mind manipulators that control all kinds of ideologies and cultural activities
(ii) there are quotes in ein kampf in which Hitler appears to be expressing an admiration for Jews
-they have survived through hardship and enmity through perseverance and the will to keep their race pure.
-ironically the destructive race is doing well what the superior Aryan race should be doing but is failing
The outcome of which race will destroy the other?
Is undetermined
This allows the Nazis to frame their struggle for racial superiority as a struggle for all humanity. With out them the planet is doomed
Mein kampf is as much a pseudo-analysis of history as it is an appeal to its male readers to get engaged
Hitlers Historical sequence of enslavement, technology, and domestication of animals
Superior race A enslaves inferior race B
Animals are domesticated and in part replace human slaves
Technology arises modelled on and designed to continue the enslavement of humans and domestication of animals
Autobahn - Economics
The third Reich only built around 4000 km of the autobahn
Most active construction period was 1936-38 and was shortly sidelined for other war related tasks
At its peak it employed 100 000 but this was after the worst of the economic crisis had passed
Autobahn - Military
It was not originally planned with military goals in mind
It kind of was the opposite - they had to plant greenery around it to obstruct visibility and had to paint it black so the bombers didn’t bomb German cities
Only real advantage was an indirect impact: if the autobahn was to increase motorizations there would be more vehicles to dispose of during war time - the main practical military advantage was requisitioning
Fritz Todt
1891-1942
Party member since 1922
Inspector for general German roadways (1933)
Reich minister for armaments and war production (1940)
A professional engineer- wanted to link practical and ideological features of the autobahn to ideological imperatives
Some of Todt’s main points:
- The autobahn should blend into the landscape- it should have sinuous curves
It should expose Germans to the natural beauty of their country and be in touch with the natural environment
You should be more German than when you set out
- It should express and support the nordics man natural inclination toward movement and adventure- driving your vw beetle on the autobahn is to be Viking reborn
Reactionary modernism
Jeffery Harf 1984
At its core reactionary modernism is a strand of thought quite common among the German right at the beginning of the 20th century, it is to attempt to recreate and maintain premodern structures by very modern, if not futuristic technology means
The people’s car
In order to automobilize the people they needed an affordable car - the people’s car (Volkswagen)
Before 1945 the beetle was known as KdF-wagen named after the state sponsored leisure organization Kraft durch Freunde (strength threw joy)
-responsible for the construction of the car factory in Wolfsburg
Very few cars got built and many who put a downpayment never got their car
Ruin Value Theory
Albert Speer - hitlers main architect- succeeds Fritz Todt as Minister of armament and war production
Theory of ruin value
- we will gaze at our monuments the same way people look at Roman ruins
-the radical twist of ruin value is that it proposes to view and design the present from the pov of the distant future
-the regime stages itself as already in the heroic past, as something that will have been
Vidkun Quisling
1887-1945
The eponymous traitor
Leader of the collaborationist Norwegian Nazi Party Nasjonal Samling (NS)
Norwegian puppet head of government during German occupation
Why did Germany occupy Denmark and Norway?
Decision was made after the defeat in Poland in late 1939
- Norway and den make had naval bases that would allow the german fleet to take on the British navy
- To ensure that the crucially important iron ore imports from Sweden were safe from allied intervention. Without the ore the german armaments industry would grind to a halt
Lebensborn and German troops
By the end of the war there were more than 400 000 troops stationed in Norway (had ~ 4 mill inhabitants)
An estimated 30-40 000 women had relations with German troops
Up to 12000 children were born out of wedlock
~8000 of the 12000 children were registered in lebensborn (fount of life)
Lebensborn
-an SS run chain of orphanage-type institutions for unwed mothers to assure that as many racially valuable babies as possible were born and survived
- although norway had 1/20 the population of Germany it had around the same Lebensborn as Germany
2-3000 Norwegian women married Germans were stripped of their Norwegian citizenship after the war
Many children moved to Germany regained citizenship after the war
Why were the Norwegians a disappointment to the Nazis?
Too much British influence and manipulation
Too much Jewish influence
Located at the margins, it has experienced too little history and has become soft
Too afflicted by modernism/liberalism (especially women)
Law of mortal danger
Erling winsnes
In return to nazis thinking Norwegians as dissapointments Ragnarok drew on the pseudo-Darwinian theories of erling winsnes to argue for their superiority over the Germans
His law of mortal danger is based on the claim that the Norwegians occupied the very peak of the racial summit b/c their ancestors had followed the retreating ice north at the end of the last ice age, thus becoming tougher and more resilient by increased exposure to a hypo thermal environment
What role will Norway play with German victory?
If the new order is still organized more or less along political lines Norway will remain in a marginal north position
If the new order stresses race Norway begin the most Nordic country stands to benefit
*a total of 4000 Norwegian signed up for waffen-SS - not all believed in German cause - see above
Himmler was hoping that indoctrinating the volunteers would make the ambassadors for the German cause after the war
Heck Brothers
Lutz Heck - Director of Berlin Zoo 1932-45 (Nazi supporter dates ending is not surprising)
Heinz heck - Director of Munich zoo 1927-64
Around 1926 the brothers undertook the first serious attempt at species resurrection
Backbreeding aurochs
-gone extinct in 1627
-premise was to see if the genetic material of the Auroch is still there though distributed across various bovine breeds
Both brothers went across Europe looking for cows that had the same physical and behavioural traits as the auroch
By crossbreeding they claimed to have recombined the various breeds into the aurochs (questionable)
Heinz’s Cattle is the one that is still around today
Auroch Habitat
Heck brothers knew that they needed to have a space similar to where the aurochs lived in order for them to thrive
A species is only a true species in concert with other species in its own right place
-in order for it’s characteristics to fully develop it has to be part of an ecology
Hence the bialowieza forest: the only forest in Europe that has remained unchanged since the aurochs
Following German conquest to the east large parts would be reforested - aurochs would be able to move in and Hermann Göring supported this
Hermann Göring
Reichsjägermeister (reich master hunter) and head of German luftwaffe
Luftwaffe units were actively involved in cleansing (killing inhabitants, refugees, or partisans) in the bialowieza forest
How did the reconstruction of the Auroch resonate with Nazi ideas about nature that characterize Nazism?
a) what came earlier, in primeval times, was better, stronger, biologically more valuable
The resurrection is a de-domestication, like turning cute dogs back into wild wolves
b) links to the German tradition of viewing countries in the east as (potential) colonies, a tendency that became stronger when Germany lost its overseas colonies but occupied what is now Poland and parts of belarus. One symbolic act is to assert mastery is to kill the biggest or fiercest animal in the colonies
Rewilding
Rewilding was the restoration of ecological cycles that will serve to restore lost and ecologically more beneficial biotopes
The aurochs will help restore the past aurochs world (and learn to behave like a proper Auroch)
You are the animals you co-evolved with (as well as the environment you evolved in), then bringing back those animals will bring back a formative piece of your past and connect you to your origins will be brought back as well
- this idea was already being recreated in lutz heck German part of the zoo
Make a zoo like a natural history museum by rearranging animals by origin to their taxonomy
Larger enclosures would that permitted various species that would have co-existed in the world to also be together in captivity, the emphasis shifted from abstract taxonomy to concrete ecology
German visitors encountering the German section would see themselves as the natural ecology
Visitors that walk past the German animals become more German than they previously were
Generalplan Ost
Buoyed by the idea of territorial expansion, SS leader Heinrich Himmler commissioned an interdisciplinary group of academics to prepare what came to be general plan ost:a massive social and racial engineering project to ethnically and spatially reshape the East in line with Nazi ideology
The core idea of this is Lebensraum
Hitler argued that there were too many people in too small of a “living space”
Instead of heading south and west he needed to go east
-the east offered enough living space to sustain the German people and to grow in population. Hitler wanted an increase from 80 to 300 mill - put Germany on the same footing as US + Soviet union
Some key points of the plan:
Himmler was responsible for repatriating ethnic Germans who were scatter across Eastern Europe and resettle them
This resettlement required a reduction of the native population- not just relocation but a great replacement in the shape of genocidal settler colonialism
-Jews are not talked about as they predict they are already free from Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe would be a backward looking world
-primarily one of farmers
-Himmler referred to German farmers as wehrbauem (Defense farmers)
This plan was to be fully implemented after the war, the Nazi regime began to implement a short term starvation plan in the east
Konrad Meyer
The main in charge of compiling generalplan ost
1901-73
Professor of agriculture sciences, university of Berlin (1934-45)
Key gumtree consultant and spatial planner
Member of the SS
In charge of the interdisciplinary group that prepares generalplan ost
Hunger Plan
Herbert Backe (1896-1947)
1933-44: State secretary in the NS-ministry of food and agriculture
1944-45: minister of food and agriculture
Mainly responsible for the “hunger plan” to be implemented in Russia
Projected death: 30 mill
Actual death: 4.2 mill
Rationale: army planners argued that the millions of soldies and six hundred thousand horses invading the Soviet Union could not be fed by shipping supplies from Germany
The army would have to live off the land - in order to do this the plan was to cordon off cities in the Soviet Union, block food transports, and let up to 30 mill “unnecessary eaters” starve
The first victims were soviet pows
-of the 5.7 mill. Captured 3.3 mill died of which 2.8 mill died b/w June 1941 and late 1942 (mostly from starvation)
Herbert backe committed suicide while in captivity
Polycratic
A poly racy is a society with many different leaders and organizations in charge
Although Hitler is the clear leader there were in fact numerous ministers and organizations with powers often pursuing their own interest
