Germany and the Fall of Western Civilization

1919-1945

Hanna Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem 1963

The “Banality of Evil”

I. The Politics of the Irrational& the Racial State

Humanity seems to have run like boys let out of schoolaway from the humanitarian, idealistic nineteenth century,from whose morality – if we can speak at all of morality inthis connection – represents a wide and wild reaction.

Thomas Mann 1875-1955

- “An Appeal to Reason” 1931

A. What Is Fascism?

Fascio“witch’s brew” of ideologies

- response to humiliation

- concern w/ decadence / cultural conservatism

- failure of democracy / capitalism / Enlightenment- intense nationalism / xenophobia / Volkish history

- racism / Social Darwinism- suppression of class conflict- scapegoating; internal “threats” (November Criminals)

B. The New Rome

1. Benito Mussolini 1922-43

2. Cult of Personality “Il Duce”

I know your anger, I know your dreams.I’ve been everything you want to be.

3. Attack on “bourgeois” values- individualism- liberalism

4. Squadristi “black shirts”

5. Militarism- Ethiopia ’35- Albania ’39

Lebensraum

6. Pact of Steel, 1939

I. The Weimar Republic, 1919-1933

Triumph of the Will

Leni Riefenstahl - 1934 Nuremberg rally- how did the Nazis seduce Germany?

A. Limited Recovery, 1924-26

1. Dawes Plan 19242. Treaties of Locarno 1925

- end of occupation- entrance to League of Nations

3. Von Hindenburg becomes

President

4. Liberal, artistic, literary society

- Bauhaus school

B. Collapse

1. Weak “civil society”- Revolution 1918-1919- Freikorps- Kapp Putsch 1920- Beer Hall Putsch 1923

2. Great Depression

Legacy the Weimar Republic

1. Experiment in democracy that failed

- economic failure / anger over WWI left

many Germans distrustful of liberal govt.

2. Dissatisfaction with democracy left the door

open for radicals

3. Hitler took over a system that was already

broken

C. The Rise to Power

1. Election of 1932- Hitler appointed Chancellor, Jan. 1933

2. Enabling Act, March 1933

II. Life in the Third Reich

A. Nazi support

- farmers , small business men, civil servants

- “Hitler Youth”

3. alliance w/ military, industry- rearmament, Rhineland 1936- autarky

4. Paramilitary thugs- SA, “stormtroopers”- SS Schutzstaffel Krupp Iron Works

B. Propaganda and Culture

"The chief function of propaganda is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time in order that they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind.“

- Mein Kampf

Joseph Goebbels

1. Family and the state- Lebensborn “spring of life”

2. Racial Hygiene- public health / heredity- “mainstream”- sterilization

3. Euthanasia- Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditarily and Congenitally-based Illnesses (1938)

Bishop of Münster

“banality of evil” - Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem

4. “Asocials” - Sinti and Roma - addicts/criminals - homosexuals

5. “Decadence”

III. The Holocaust

Genocide - Any act committed with the idea of

destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic,

racial or religious group

- killing or causing physical/mental harm

- inflicting conditions that would harm a group

- forcefully transferring children

- United Nations, 1948

Century of genocide1915 – 1.5 M Armenians

30’s-40s – Hitler, 12 M ? Stalin, 15-20 M ?

Tojo, 5 M

50s-60s – Mao, 50 M ?

1970s – Pol Pot, 1.7 M

1990s – Rwanda, 1+ M ?

Bosnia and Herzegovina

- “ethnic cleansing”

A. “Racial” enemies

1. Culture creators (Aryans)

Culture bearers (Japanese)

Culture destroyers (Jews)

2. Racist ideology not unique to Nazis - the scale of murder was

3. Alienation as a precondition- segregation / concentration camps

B. Pre-war assault

1. Romanticism / nationalism

2. Nuremberg Laws - 1935- Protection of German Blood and German Honor

- Reich Citizenship Law

3. Kristallnacht - 1938

C. Ghettos - 1939 - 41

IV. The Final Solution

Auschwitz, 1991

Auschwitz Ovens

A. 1941 – USSR

1. Einsatzgruppe

September, Babi Yar

B. Wannsee Conference

1. “Final Solution”November 1942

Reinhard Heydrich

C. Resistance

1. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising January 1943

2. Non-Jewish Resistance

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945- “cheap” vs. “costly” grace

Confessing Church

3. Reality

“The Road to the Holocaust was built by hate but

paved with indifference.” - Ian Kershaw

Allied complicity?

Voyage of the Damned

V. Legacy

A. Nuremberg Trials - 1945-491. Morgenthau Plan2. UN guidelines, 1948

B. Cold War

1. Versailles Diktat

2. New enemy

C. Jewish Homeland

1. Zionism

D. Implications for the West

1. Racist ideology not unique to Nazis - the scale of murder was

2. Alienation as a precondition

3. Western guilt?- Internationalism / Idealism