"Annihilation through labor": the killing of state prisoners in the Third Reich

One of the most distinctive features of Nazi society was the increasingly radical division of its members into “national comrades” and “community aliens.” The former were to be protected by the state and encouraged to procreate, while the latter were seen as political, social, racial, or eugenic threats and were to be ruthlessly eliminated from society. With the start of the Second World War, various nonlethal forms of discrimination against these “community aliens” were gradually replaced by policies geared to physical annihilation, culminating above all in the extermination of the European Jews. In view of a crime of this previously unimaginable magnitude, it is hardly surprising that when historians started in earnest to examine the genocidal policies of the Nazi dictatorship in the 1960s they focused on the development and administration of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” as the Nazis called it. But in the last two decades, the fate of other “community aliens” in the Third Reich, such as the Roma and Sinti (“Gypsies”), slave laborers, and the disabled, has been investigated too. Some historians have also begun to examine those who deviated in various other ways from the norms of society, people who were often classified in the Third Reich, and indeed before, as “asocials.” There was never an agreed definition as to who these people were, and the term was used to stigmatize a vast variety of nonnormative behavior. According to a 1938 directive by the head of the German security police, Reinhard Heydrich, any person could be classified as “asocial” who “demonstrates through conduct opposed to the community . . . that he does not want to adapt to the community.” During the Third Reich, such vague statements served as the basis for the persecution of juvenile delinquents, criminal offenders, vagrants, prostitutes, and homosexuals, among many others. Certain groups were simultaneously classified as racial and social outsiders and thus suffered “dual racism.” This was true in particular for the Sinti and Roma, who had been persecuted for their way of life long before the Nazi “seizure of power” in 1933. Historical research into the fate of the “asocials” has produced some valuable insights into the treatment of members of these marginal groups in the Third Reich, many of whom died in SS concentration or extermination camps. Yet despite this growing interest, the most comprehensive of all the extermination programs directed against “asocials” in the Third Reich has never been investigated. From late 1942 onward, over twenty thousand offenders classified as “asocial” were taken out of the state penal system and transferred to the police for “annihilation through labor.” At least two-thirds of them perished in concentration camps. But in the historical literature this program has either been dealt with in passing or completely ignored. Why have historians neglected the murder of state prisoners? There appears to be a reluctance to focus on offenders against the law in the Third Reich, unless their offences can be seen in some way as forms of political or social protest. In contrast to the racially or politically persecuted, not all common criminals can be described merely as innocent victims, and the often brutal behavior of criminal Kapos in concentration camps probably further alienated historians from dealing with the criminals. Another factor that explains the poor state of research is the inaccessibility of source material. Leading officials in the Ministry of Justice made sure that most files relating to the “annihilation through labor” of state prisoners were pulped before the end of the war.8 Yet individual documents have survived, scattered around various archives in Germany. They can be complemented by information gained from individual prisoner files, as well as from unpublished documents and testimonies collected in numerous postwar legal investigations. None of these criminal investigations ever led to the conviction of the prison officials involved—another reason for the lack of historical interest. Finally, German legal history after the war spread the myth that the legal administration had rejected or even resisted the Nazi regime. State penal institutions, if dealt with at all, were described as safe havens that had “nothing to do with the concentration camps.” Thus, until today, historians have largely ignored the state prison system and its inmates. This article will first describe the origins of the decision in 1942 for the extermination of certain state prisoners. Then the actual process of transfer will be investigated in detail, examining issues such as the background of the transferred inmates and the participation of prison officials. The article will also deal with the fate of the state prisoners after their transport to the Nazi concentration camps and the radicalization of policy against the prisoners remaining in the state penal institutions. Exploring these issues contributes to our knowledge of the treatment of deviants in the Third Reich. But this article will also address some wider issues concerning the nature of the Nazi dictatorship, such as the origins of extermination policies in the Third Reich. In recent years, a number of historians have argued that it was time to move beyond the “sterile debates” between so-called intentionalist historians, who focused on the murderous will and ideology of the Nazi leaders, above all Hitler, and so-called structuralist historians, who pointed to the dynamic and uncoordinated interactions between different agencies of the Nazi dictatorship that led to a “cumulative radicalization” (Hans Mommsen). Various historians have now put forward a synthesis of both positions, while ground-breaking empirical research into the “final solution” has posed new questions and provided new answers. Still, many of the more recent studies of Nazi genocide continue to explore central issues first raised in the debates between intentionalists and structuralists such as Hitler’s role in extermination policy, the interaction between regional officials and the decision makers in Berlin, and the role of racial ideology versus more material motives in Nazi mass murder. This study of the “annihilation through labor” of state prisoners addresses some of these general issues. It will also shed new light on the relation between the judiciary and the police in the Third Reich. The postwar portrait of a passive or even anti-Nazi judiciary has not gone unchallenged. Still, many historians continue to describe the judicial authorities and the police as having been in a constant state of conflict. They describe the Third Reich as a “dual state,” split between the “prerogative state” and the “normative state.” The latter was the traditional state apparatus, ensuring that normal life was ruled by legal norms. However, in matters that were thought to touch on the interest of the state, the “prerogative state” could override these legal norms, above all through the agency of the police, locking up all political, racial, and social suspects in SS concentration camps without trial. Thus, state attorneys and the police are seen as competing institutions of prosecution, while state penal institutions and concentration camps are described as competing institutions of confinement. A detailed investigation of the transfer of state prisoners can help to establish how far this picture of the “dual state” stands up to critical scrutiny

Multimodal wide-field two-photon excitation imaging: characterization of the technique for in vivo applications

We report fast, non-scanning, wide-field two-photon fluorescence excitation with spectral and lifetime detection for in vivo biomedical applications. We determined the optical characteristics of the technique, developed a Gaussian flat-field correction method to reduce artifacts resulting from non-uniform excitation such that contrast is enhanced, and showed that it can be used for ex vivo and in vivo cellular-level imaging. Two applications were demonstrated: (i) ex vivo measurements of beta-amyloid plaques in retinas of transgenic mice, and (ii) in vivo imaging of sulfonated gallium(III) corroles injected into tumors. We demonstrate that wide-field two photon fluorescence excitation with flat-field correction provides more penetration depth as well as better contrast and axial resolution than the corresponding one-photon wide field excitation for the same dye. Importantly, when this technique is used together with spectral and fluorescence lifetime detection modules, it offers improved discrimination between fluorescence from molecules of interest and autofluorescence, with higher sensitivity and specificity for in vivo applications

“She gloried in being a sailor’s wife”: A Postcolonial Reading of the Marriage Plot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion

The British Empire and imperialism are crucial parts of Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion. To investigate how the novel represents and purports imperialism, this paper combines a structuralist with a postcolonial approach and applies Said’s method of ‘contrapuntal reading.’ In addition, the approach of cultural materialism is relevant for the novel’s representation of class. My argumentation first consists of an analysis of the character constellation, in particular the opposition of gentry and naval characters, and narrative situation before turning to the novel’s marriage plot. I argue that Austen’s realist novel Persuasion legitimizes British imperialism due to its use of narrative techniques, plot, and character constellation. The narrative does not question the represented empire which functions as an opportunity for wealth and social mobility for the characters. The marriage plot, in which the female protagonist chooses a naval captain over her cousin from the landed gentry, further corroborates the novel’s support of the British Empire and demonstrates the increasing importance of the navy as well as the professional classes for England at the beginning of the nineteenth century

Book Review: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood – Tragedy in the Time of Social Media

From chronically online to a baby born with “Elephant Man” syndrome – a woman’s life is turned upside down as she has to reconsider her priorities in life

On the Matter and Intelligence of the Architectural Model: Arthur Schopenhauer’s Psychophysiological Theory of Architecture and Konrad Wachsmann’s Design of a Space Structure

During the last decades of the twentieth century, the modernist concept of ‘space’ in architecture became a subject of inquiry for architectural critics and historians. One curiosity arising within the discourse suggested that the thinking of the nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was foundational for the concept of ‘space’ that developed in German aesthetics throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, eventually informing modernist architectural theory. This essay looks at the way Schopenhauer used architectural models, not only to clarify his understanding of space, but also to demonstrate what was for him the much more important notion of ‘Idea’. It then turns to the German modernist architect Konrad Wachsmann, who was most famous for his seminal book, The Turning Point of Building (1961), which advocated the industrialization of building as a project for architecture. The essay asks if Schopenhauer’s distinction between ‘space’ and ‘Idea’ can illuminate the new ‘understanding of space’ that Wachsmann thought would arise as a consequence of a systematic industrialization of building. Discussion will focus on a particular section of Wachsmann’s book that gives an account of his design of a space structure commissioned by the US Air Force in 1959, taking that project as exemplary of his thinking, working methods and values. It will also take note of the way in which the space structure stimulated the imagination of the American artist, Robert Smithson, who began to envisage the entire planet as encapsulated in an enormous virtual grid – one that was, like a Schopenhauerian ‘Idea’, supposedly constituted out of mind and matter. To end the essay looks briefly at the notion of ‘field,’ which, many architects argued at the time, would supersede ‘space’ as the conceptual mainspring of theory and practice

Hannah Arendt's Ghosts:Reflections on the Disputable Path from Windhoek to Auschwitz

Historians on both sides of the Atlantic are currently engaged in a controversy about the allegedly genocidal nature of western colonialism and its connections with the mass violence unleashed by Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. The debate touches upon some of the most “sensitive” issues of twentieth-century history: the violent “dark side” of modern western civilization, the impact of colonial massacres on the European societies that generated this violence and, perhaps most controversially, the origins and uniqueness of the Holocaust

Energy consumption-based accounts : A comparison of results using different energy extension vectors

Increasing attention has been focussed on the use of consumption-based approaches to energy accounting via input-output (IO) methods. Of particular interest is the examination of energy supply chains, given the associated risks from supply-chain issues, including availability shocks, taxes on fossil fuels and fluctuating energy prices. Using a multiregional IO (MRIO) database to calculate energy consumption-based accounts (CBA) allows analysts to both determine the quantity and source of energy embodied in products along the supply chain. However, it is recognised in the literature that there is uncertainty as to the most appropriate type of energy data that should be employed in an IO framework. Questions arise as to whether an energy extension vector should show where the energy was extracted or where it was used (burnt). In order to address this gap, we undertake the first empirical MRIO analysis of an energy CBA using both vectors. Our results show that both the energy-extracted and energy-used vectors produce similar estimates of the overall energy CBA for the UK—notably 45% higher than territorial energy requirements. However, at a more granular level, the results show that the type of vector that should be employed ultimately depends on the research question that is considered. For example, the energy-extracted vector reveals that just 20% of the UK's energy CBA includes energy extracted within the UK, an issue that is upmost importance for energy security policy. At the other end, the energy-used vector allows for the attribution of actual energy use to industry sectors, thereby enabling a better understanding of sectoral efficiency gains. These findings are crucial for users and developers of MRIO databases who undertake energy CBA calculations. Since both vectors appear useful for different energy questions, the construction of robust and consistent energy-used and energy-extracted extension vectors as part of commonly-used MRIO model databases is encouraged

Happiness versus the environment - a case study of Australian lifestyles

Crafting environmental policies that at the same time enhance, or at least not reduce people\u27s wellbeing, is crucial for the success of government action aimed at mitigating environmental impact. However, there does not yet exist any survey that refers to one and the same population, and that allows the identifying relationships and trade-offs between subjective wellbeing and the complete environmental impact of households. In order to circumvent the lack of comprehensive survey information, we attempt to integrate two separate survey databases, and describe the challenges associated with this integration. Our results indicate that carbon footprints are likely to increase, but wellbeing levels off with increasing income. Living together with people is likely to create a win-win situation where both climate and wellbeing benefit. Car ownership obviously creates emissions, however personal car ownership enhances subjective wellbeing, but living in an area with high car ownership decreases subjective wellbeing. Finally, gaining educational qualifications is linked with increased emissions. These results indicate that policy-making is challenged in striking a wise balance between individual convenience and the common good