Memories of an Unfulfilled Promise: Internationalism and Patriotism in Post-Soviet Oral Histories of Jewish Survivors of the Nazi Genocide

Memories of Soviet Jews who were born during the first two decades of the existence of the USSR show that the destruction of the Soviet society and its ideological tenets is central to their experience of the Nazi genocide. Elderly survivors of the Nazi genocide remember their lives based on comparative evalu- ations of their lives in the Soviet Union and under the Nazi regime, making a strong case for understanding memory as a relational construct. Interrogating the significance of growing up secular and Soviet for experiencing and remembering the Nazi genocide reveals that in order to understand Soviet Jews’ responses to German occupation and genocide and how they remember them, we must turn to their prewar socialization as Soviet internationalists and patriots

The Use and Abuse of Archaeology to Promote Nazi Nationalist Goals

By appealing to the people, and restoring a sense of pride through nationalism, Hitler and his Nazi party gained immense popularity. In this article, I explore one of the Nazi party\u27s most influential, yet not well known or studied in depth, methods for inspiring nationalistic pride in Germany, archaeological research

The RSHA Generation

The Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) was once the capital of a vast empire of terror; a place where surveillance, persecution, and extermination became merely a quotidian, bureaucratic function and where the Schreibtischtäter could implement their deadly ideology from afar, or sometimes in person; a place where divisions of the SS less associated by the general public with Nazi crimes against humanity, such as the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo), would persecute and kill more people than the Gestapo and most other Nazi institutions of terror. The RSHA and its many offices became an outlet for many Nazi intellectual elites, who were educated at the prestigious institutions of Weimar and Nazi Germany. After the creation of the RSHA within the SS, these individuals through this apparatus and the opportunities presented by German military conquests were transformed from ideological academics to calculating exterminators of millions. Some made the transition behind a desk in Berlin, while others were committed to seeing the fruits of their labor first hand. These were the ‘true believers’ and most devoted followers of National Socialism

Against the mainstream, nazi privatization in 1930s Germany.

The Great Depression spurred State ownership in Western capitalist countries. Germany was no exception, the last governments of the Weimar Republic took over firms in diverse sectors. Later, the Nazi regime transferred public ownership and public services to the private sector. In doing so, they went against the mainstream trends in the Western capitalist countries, none of which systematically reprivatized firms during the 1930s. Privatization in Nazi Germany was also unique in transferring to private hands the delivery of public services previously provided by government. The firms and the services transferred to private ownership belonged to diverse sectors. Privatization was part of an intentional policy with multiple objectives and was not ideologically driven. As in many recent privatizations, particularly within the European Union, strong financial restrictions were a central motivation. In addition, privatization was used as a political tool to enhance support for the government and for the Nazi Party.Privatization, Public Enterprise, Nazi Economy, Germany.

Newsroom: Lawyers Under the Nazis

Available @ http://law.rwu.edu/story/lawyers-under-nazi

BAD CURATION: Exhibiting Degenerate Art

In a time of censorship and social control under the ideology of the Nazi regime, Hitler and his counterparts produced an exhibition to discredit artistic developments deemed inappropriate and counterproductive for society. This project analyzed the \u27\u27Degenerate Art\u27\u27 exhibition within the context of Nazi Germany, giving particular attention to the curatorial methods used to display the works, in order to understand the purpose of this exhibition and evaluate its impact

Betting on Hitler: The value of political connections in Nazi Germany

This paper examines the value of connections between German industry and the Nazi movement in early 1933. Drawing on previously unused contemporary sources about management and supervisory board composition and stock returns, we find that one out of seven firms, and a large proportion of the biggest companies, had substantive links with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Firms supporting the Nazi movement experienced unusually high returns, outperforming unconnected ones by 5% to 8% between January and March 1933. These results are not driven by sectoral composition and are robust to alternative estimators and definitions of affiliation.Political Connections, Stock Market, Asset Pricing, Nazi Rise to Power, Interwar Germany

The Long-Term Direct and External Effects of Jewish Expulsions in Nazi Germany

This paper provides causal evidence on long-term consequences of Jewish expulsions in Nazi Germany on the educational attainment and political outcomes of German children. We combine a unique city-level dataset on the fraction of Jewish population residing in Germany before the Nazi Regime with individual survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Our identification strategy exploits the plausibly exogenous city-by-cohort variation in the Jewish population in Germany as a unique quasi-experiment. We find that the persecution of Jewish professionals had significant, long-lasting detrimental effects on the human capital and political development of Germans who were at school-age during the Nazi Regime. First, these children have 0.4 fewer years of schooling on average in adulthood. Second, these children are less likely to go to college or have a graduate degree. Third, they are less likely to have interest in politics as adults. These results survive using alternative samples and specifications, including controlling for Second World War, Nazi and Communist Party support and unemployment effects.human capital formation, dismissal, Jewish professionals, political development

Education in Nazi Germany

This essay investigates the sweeping educational reforms that the Nazi government implemented to use elementary education to further its political goals. Along with the major laws concerned, it concentrates on several personal accounts of families and students during this era to better understand how these educational reforms affected Germans. Additionally, it analyzes the Hitler Youth and other such recreational organizations that the Nazis created to continue to mold students’ ideologies. It examines the stories of several people who were children in these organizations and what their impressions were of the groups. Finally, it places these Nazi reforms in the context of the post-1945 period of denazification and reconstruction