...There have been a lot of controversies about Hitler being the master of the third Reich after the Second World War. The intentionalist historians, such as, Richard Evans and Eberhard Jackel have argued Hitler was a strong dictator, and thus an interventionist. They focus on Hitler’s nature of dictatorship and argued was the prime mover of domestic and foreign policy, again indicating he was an interventionist. However, the structionalist historians challenge this idea of Hitler being an omnipotent figure and argues Hitler’s state of government was polycratic and chaotic. They argued Hitler was a merely puppet, a figurehead ‘non-interventionist’, although his ideas were central to Nazism, they were empowered by others. The historian Lan Kershaw came up with this argument of working towards the Fuhrer, arguably making him a non-interventionist dictator as others knew what he wanted, example the Fuhrer Befehl therefore he didn’t have to get involved in the day-day running of government. It has been argued that Hitler’s image of a powerful dictator made his a ‘non-interventionist’. Structuralist historian, such as Lan Kershaw argued in source 4 Hitler was a ‘non-interventionist dictator’, his image of being erratic was in fact a myth. As a result, his ‘party officials, more often than not, tended to view the will of the Fuhrer’, as suggested by source 5. Ultimately Hitler was weak in that he relied on, albeit a very powerful propangda machinery by Goebbels, to provide a myth. In...
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...Totalitarianism is a type of dictatorship its when the country doesn't have a limit with their authority and changes the public and private lives with what they think will help their country. Russia, Italy, Germany, and Japan were all totalitarian governments. Yes, I think the Third Reich was a totalitarian government because Hitler banished democracy and made it a dictatorship where he ruled every aspect of it. Adolf Hitler was popular because he was very skilled in politics, and was a good speaker to the public which won the Germans worship. The Nazi Party was built on militarism, nationalism, and racism telling the Germans that they were the superior race and blaming everyone else other than them for their defeat in the war. The only...
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...Even 70 years after the events, the atrocities committed by physicians in Nazi Germany during Hitler’s Third Reich and the influences it has made on bioethics today are still widely debated. Who were these doctors and did they view what they were doing as wrong, or did they simply view themselves as healers for what they considered the superior race? To understand how to react to such a ruthless period of time, one must first understand who these alleged physicians were and attempt to analyze the psyche and supposed justification as “medical research”. While society today can agree that the actions relating to medical treatment and human experimentation were inexcusable, some people believe it is ethical for medical researchers to utilize data...
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...War II the Third Reich doctors did not adhere to any type of Morale code. The Nazi party believed that the Aryan race were superior to all other races Although this belief was not excepted by all Germans. A leading German scientist spoke out against the Nazi Party's ideals " The doctors are turning Germany into an Infernal combination of a lunatic asylum and a charnel house" (Rawlinson) They hired doctors like Josef Mengele who was called the “ Angel of death” ( Josef Mengele ) to perform...
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...Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich: Omer Bartov Ioan Popescu 500182744 HST 603-011 The autonomy of the Wehrmacht within the confines of the Third Reich, particularly with respect to its relationship with the Nazi party has been open to considerable debate post World War II. In Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich, Omer Bartov addresses the motivating factors responsible for transforming the Wehrmacht from merely a highly efficient and professional military organization into an extremely politicized armed forces motivated by National Socialist ideals. Bartov argues four distinct yet related theories which, when taken together bring insight into the Nazification of the Wehrmacht in ultimately becoming Hitler’s Army. His arguments first highlight the war experience through the de-modernization of the Wehrmacht particularly on the eastern front along with the social organization relating to the destruction of the ‘Primary Group’. These factors resulted in the Wehrmacht to compensate through the ‘Perversion of Discipline’ which directly attributed to many war crimes along with harsh punishment of its own soldiers. Finally, the distortion of reality through propaganda all shaped the soldiers perception of the war and ultimately allowed Hitler to assume total control of the Wehrmacht. Murray Sager argues that the Wehrmacht supported Hitler, not just in gratitude, but because the Wehrmacht closely identified with the aims of National...
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...This remark was fabricated by Albert Speer, the one-time chief architect for the Third Reich, where he claims that at twenty-eight years of age and numerous ‘frustrated’ efforts to secure a position as an ‘independent architect’, he was incapable of rejecting such an offer where he was commissioned to design a ‘great building.’ The inability to deny the position that was presented to him at the time by Adolf Hitler, marked and tainted Albert Speer as arguably the most despicable and dishonorable man of all those who were involved in the slaying of millions of Jewish men, women, and children. For he was acknowledged as the architect behind the strategically built gas chambers and other structures of death that instigated the demise of many Jews....
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...democratic Germany’s; The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). This is significant, due to foreign powers controlling Germany’s political system, as well as the departure from Sonderweg, meaning Germany no longer followed a unique path of development and that nationalism and militarism were on the decline. The significance of the previous German eras, Kaiser Reich (Semi-Autocratic Empire), Weimar Republic (Federal Democracy) and the Third Reich (Dictatorship) are also significant, however in political terms they are not as significant as post 45. The significances of post 1945 can be seen by its success of creating a working democracy in Germany after 1945, the FRG. One reason why the FRG was successful revolves around the sudden decline in German militarism and nationalism. This is evident in the fact that the FRG’s constitution was based on the Weimar Republics concept of ‘Grundgesetz’, which means basic law. The implications of this is evident in that German nationalism after WW2 no longer believing in Sonderweg after the defeat of the Third Reich. This caused the abhorrence towards western democracy (being seen as weak and disorderly) to fade and in turn allowed the Germans to become more open towards the ideas of democracy and made them see themselves as an important part of the West. In the long term,...
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...The Holocaust: Suggested Reading There is a wealth of information about the Holocaust. So much has been written, in fact, that it can be difficult to determine where to start. This reading list is collected from recommendations from other members of The Holocaust History Project. It is not a complete bibliography but represents our opinion as to what are the most useful starting places for research. Since this list concentrates on works that are easily available and useful to a person unacquainted with the history of the Holocaust, many excellent books which are rare or out of print are not listed. Another class of books that are not included is works that are controversial because of their contents or the unusual theories they propose. Some of these are excellent works, others are not. But we feel that the reader for whom this list was compiled would not have the knowledge needed to evaluate these discussions of the legitimate controversies about the Holocaust. Just as a medical student must learn anatomy before he or she is taught surgery, someone studying the Holocaust must know the factual background before some of the more technical studies can be understood. As well as general works we have included books of specialized interest concerning the matters about which we at The Holocaust History Project are most frequently asked. Many of these books deal with more than one subject, but in the interest of brevity we have not cited a book more than once. General history of the...
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...read. (Wachsmann) German soldiers fed Jews false hope, thinking that the harder they worked the closer freedom would be when in reality freedom could only come with death. The world changed forever when an estimated 20,946,000 people died due to the world war ignited by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. The Third Reich was the name for Nazi Germany under Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) when it was a totalitarian state. Totalitarianism is a political system where the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever necessary. (Dictionary) Soldiers were killed in battle, Civilians in cross fire, and by starvation but nothing compares to the systematic execution and elimination demonstrated by the Third Reich sponsored death camps. Before the organized concentration camps that are well known throughout the world to have killed a countless number of people there were camps built in the early 1930’s when the Nazi’s first came into power. Earlier camps were temporary and were set up to confine, interrogate, torture, and weaken the Nazis' political opponents under the control of the Gestapo. The camps built later by The Reich between 1939 and 1942 were used to hold large groups of prisoners without trial including Jews, gypsies, Slavs, and prisoners of war. They were built killing centers for efficient means of mass murder unlike concentration camps which served as detention and labor centers. Millions of...
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...To what extent did women’s status improve in Nazi Germany? Hitler had a very clear idea of women’s role; she was the centre of family life, a housewife and the mother. Their job was to keep the house nice for their husband and family – their lives should revolve round the three ‘ks’, church, children and cooking. This ideal was based around Hitler wanting to achieve his long held goal of Lebensraum to increase the German Aryan population. Strasser argues that ‘National Socialism intended to restore the natural order, and states that this was to accord women the respect they deserved as mothers and housewives’, therefore improving their status. However Carey argues that women’s position did not improve and “throughout the civil war women endured horrific human rights violations...women were raped tortured, and killed.” To a greater extent, it is more credible to argue that women’s status did not improve in Nazi Germany because they were fixed with a specific role of being a housewife and breeding children and women who did not fit the German ideal were persecuted. Word count: Cumulative word count: Married women benefitted as they were rewarded with incentives, such as loans. This is evident through the Law for the Encouragement of Marriage which was passed in July 1933. This enabled ‘newlyweds to take out a loan of 1000 marks’, with the agreement that for every child they had from this point onward they would not have to pay back 25% of the loan. This meant that if...
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...DICTATOR? Introduction The question of whether Hitler was master in the Third Reich or a weak dictator' is one of the central debates amongst historians of Nazi Germany. It is not necessary to spend too much time here outlining the debate, as this information can easily be found elsewhere (see, for example, the excellent chapter on this subject in Ian Kershaw's The Nazi Dictatorship). Broadly speaking, historians who have participated in this debate can be located on a scale ranging from the intentionalists' at one extreme to the functionalists' on the other. The intentionalists' include historians such as Norman Rich, Joachim Fest and Karl Dietrich Bracher. What these historians have in common is their stress on the centrality of Hitler's person and ideology in Nazi Germany. According to Rich, for example: The point cannot be emphasised too strongly. Hitler was master in the Third Reich.' The structuralist' school of thought (sometimes called the functionalist' school) includes historians such as Tim Mason, Hans Mommsen and Martin Broszat. Though structuralists do not deny the importance of Hitler's role, they tend to stress the fact that he exercised his power within certain structures that shaped, and in some ways placed limits upon, his policies. Some structuralists also argue that Hitler was indecisive, influenced by his cronies, and divorced from the day-to-day running of the Third Reich. Hans Mommsen even goes so far as to argue that Hitler was in some ways...
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...the idea of euthanizing the mentally ill, or physically disabled to save costs across the country. This opened the idea of euthanasia as a way to solve any problems with unwanted or undesirable people. By the time the Nazi party came to power the idea to preserve the valuable people, and rid the world of undesirable people was already common among society. Hitler was very open about his hatred for the Jewish people, but was careful to proceed slowly while introducing the hatred to fellow members of the Third Reich and other German citizens. It started with limits for the Jewish people, such as careers they could have, places they could go, assets they could have or obtain etc… Then the introduction of the Jewish Ghetto’s took place, to separate the unwanted people from the non-Jewish Germans. Several families would be forced to share a small space to live in. From there it escalated to Jews being sent from Ghetto’s to labor camps where they would do hard labor for the Third Reich, so that they would not have to sacrifice the work of the “real” German people. Labor camps turned into death camps where Jews were killed by the tens of thousands daily, and for a long time, even those citizens living near these camps...
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...Was Hitler a Weak Dictator? David Williamson examines two seemingly irreconcilable schools of though Perhaps of all the exam questions set on the Third Reich, `Was Hitler a Weak Dictator?' is the most difficult. It leads to the heart of the complex Intentionalist-Structuralist debate. On the one hand, there are the Intentionalist historians who argue forcefully in the words of Norman Rich that `Hitler was master in the Third Reich', while the Structuralists stress the many constraints on Hitler's power which range from his own personal inadequacies to the limits imposed upon him by the structure of the Nazi party and state. Mommsen, for instance, argues that he was `in many ways a weak dictator', (1) and David Irving in one of his earlier and less outrageous books even goes so far as to describe him as `probably the weakest leader Germany has known this century'. (2) The weak dictator/leader argument is paradoxical and is bitterly contested by a formidable array of historians who include, amongst many others, Bullock, Bracher, Dawidowicz, Hildebrand, and Jackel, who argue that Hitler had a programme and possessed the necessary powers to implement it. Bracher and Bullock, for instance, see Hitler as an immensely cunning politician who would use any tactic to further his aims. Bullock stresses that his foreign policy is only explicable if seen as a combination of `consistency of aim with complete opportunism in method and tactics'. (3) It is certainly hard to make out a case...
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...The Author Guida Diehl was the founder and leader of the Newland Movement, which pre-dated the Nazi Party by at least six years. She came from a nationalist and anti-Semitic family, and only joined the Nazi Party in August 1930. Following the advice of Adolf Stocker, who hated Jews and supported the emancipation of unmarried women, she attended social-work school and later worked as a teacher of social work in Frankfurt. Diehl constantly preached a spiritualist, quasi-Christian, and nationalist message, that went against the postwar values of Americanism, materialism, and mammonism, which threatened to overpower Volk, God, and fatherland. Diehl wholly supported National Socialist goals, the Nazi’s anti-communism and anti-Semitism, and was particularly concerned with stemming the tide of moral ‘filth’ including the campaign to legalize abortion. Diehl was installed as ‘cultural advisor’ in the Nazi Party, but by 1936 had lost any appreciable political influence or organizational role. The Document in its Historical Context The title of the document undergoing analysis is, “A New Type of Woman”, and “Principles of the National Socialist Women’s Organizations” (the document), both from the book ‘Die deutsche Frau und der National Sozialismus (The German Woman and National Socialism), and published in 1932. “A New Type of Woman”, as written by Guida Diehl, outlines what characteristics a German woman should possess, and what type of woman she should aspire to become....
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...There is a lot of controversy over Pope Pius XII’s silence in the face of Nazi atrocities during World War II. There are some historians who say that the Pope was threatened not to disagree with the Holocaust and therefore he kept quiet, while others say he did help the Jews but stopped and did not continue to try. Despite the different theories for his failure to act, the most compelling reason was his desire to enhance the power of the papacy by protecting Catholicism. During his lifetime, he pursued agreements with different states to maintain Vatican authority. In negotiating an agreement with the Third Reich, he chose to ensure the Vatican’s control over the churches in Germany in exchange for Catholic withdrawal from political activity....
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