Nazi Mind In The 1980's And Now

This book takes place sometime during the 1960s after the Second World War. Some Germans would rather forget it ever happened than acknowledge the disgraceful events that took place during World War II “Adolf Eichmann's trial began on April 11, 1961 in Jerusalem, Israel. Eichmann was

Simon Wiesenthal was born in Poland, December 31, 1908. Simon was a Jew trapped in 7 different concentration camps. He drew pictures of what he saw to recount the horror. Simon was liberated in May 5, 1945. Simon started a club/program to bring Nazis to justice. His main target was Adolf Eichmann; a Nazi who wanted to kill all the Jew’s and used little kids for lab experiments. Simon located him in Argentina. Adolf Eichmann was at trial and pleaded he was not guilty. After the trial Simon wrote a book about Eichmann. Simon didn’t spend time with his daughter since he was

The application of Nazi ideas and ideology was based on two types of force against individuals and social groups. One of these took the form of propaganda and indoctrination, the other was based on terror (Kühl, 2002). The Nazi ensured that not to appear

Nobody can disagree with the fact that George Orwell’s vision, in his book 1984, didn’t come true. Though many people worried that the world might actually come to what Orwell thought, the year 1984 came and went and the world that Orwell created was something people did not have to worry about anymore. Many people have wondered what was happening in Orwell’s life and in his time that would inspire him to create this politically motivated book. A totalitarian world where one person rules and declares what is a crime and what is not, is something many people would have been scared of a lot. The totalitarianism in 1984 is very similar to the Nazism that was occurring in Germany with Hitler. This could have been the key thing that motivated

The Nuremburg Trials of 1945 were some of the most controversial military tribunals to be held in the 20th century. In the trials, Nazi war criminals were put on trial for the atrocities they committed against the Jewish population of Germany. When asked why they had committed such acts of horror, many of the Nazi soldiers attested by saying that they were under orders to do so. The trials questioned the motives behind instances of mass human torment which have led many scientists and psychologists to strive to understand the rationality behind human obedience. Two of these psychologists, Theodore Dalrymple and Erich Fromm explored the instances in which disobedience and obedience to authority should be applied. Fromm wrote his article

Within Germany, a country torn between the rise of a totalitarian party that determined a superior race, Nazism, and the survival of the oppressed, young Germans face a test between a sense of self and society. Individuality would be suppressed within this new type of society, and being different would be the deadliest obstruction to life. The violations of the rights to life, religion, and speech are relived through the stories of the German youth that lived through this haunting time, whose name would be tarnished in their struggle to survive. In their fight, their morals would be challenged and influenced until the Nazi regime ended, and the violation of human dignity would leave them wondering if life was worth living after all. The Nazi Party grew under its leader, Adolf Hitler, which struggled not to use violence against those that disagreed with their views, starting with armed groups known as the Strum Abteilung, who pledged to be ready to sacrifice their life in the aims of the Nazi Party and absolute loyalty to their leader. Their cruel intolerance began by their strong nationalism and their hatred of democracy and communism, and they gained power through the economic depressions around the world, controlling the media by instilling fear and propaganda that influenced a strong belief in their leaders. This belief in the leaders would soon seem to override Church influence when the official body of the Church failed to do anything significant

The investigation assesses the Nazi regime from 1933 – 1945 in regards to the totality of their actions. In order to evaluate the Nazi regime on whether or not they were more evil than other genocidal regimes, the investigation evaluates how the Nazis controlled their country. The investigation will start in the early years of the Nazi regime in how they set up their totalitarian government and how they expanded their control. Then the Holocaust will be looked at for how the Nazis treated those they were exterminating. Accounts from soldiers and Jewish people who lived through the Nazi control will be mostly used to evaluate if the Nazis were more evil than other genocidal regimes. Two of the sources used in this essay, “The Liberation of Dachau” by Chuck Ferree, and “Fate did not let me go” a letter by Valli Ollendorff are then evaluated for their origins, purposes, values and limitations.

Regarding to how the Nazi’s treated the Jews and changed their life politically one of the

The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz is an intriguing read. Koonz’s thesis in the book is that Nazis, being a large party, were mostly of different mindsets, they had differing morals. Koonz writes about the party and how it got most of its fundamental bases. She talks about who brought eugenics to the table, and how Hitler convinced the people of Germany to be a part of the Nazi organization. She also writes about the radical members and what was done to keep them in line.

During this time Jews were being arrested simply because they were Jewish. This lead me to think of just how time hasn't changed and how we have not learned from the past, because right after September 11 happened Arab, Muslim or any Middle Eastern people were being arrested being they were thought of as terrorists. During our survival panel lecture I remember hearing Betty talk about how the teachers and students used to harass her and her younger brother. I really could not believe that even the teachers, who were educated, I thought they would be a lot smarter that to follow the ideology of Hitler. I understand they could not really stand up against him but they could have not encouraged it in school.

In the History 12 curriculum, information regarding the Nuremberg Trials is relatively limited. In the History 12 Student workbook, the Nuremberg Trials are briefly described as “a trial being set up by the Allies in 1946 in the city of Nuremberg, Germany” (Falk 114) and “...had leaders legally charged other leaders for their immoral actions during a war” (Falk 114). There is no further information regarding the procedures of the trials and the criminals indicted; therefore, students cannot link this particular event to those previous major incidents from the Second World War. In order to find out the methods that were used by Streicher to escape justice, primary sources such as his testimony and his published articles are required along with several secondary sources that provide supplementary details.

In the Nuremberg trials, Nazi leaders attempted to implicate this excuse as an appropriate defense for what they did in the many concentration camps spread all over Germany. In 1961, Yale University psychologist Stanly Milgram conducted a series of experiments to attempt to explain if the Nazi’s who took the orders shared the belief of anti-Semitism with their superior officers or were they truly just “following orders.”

Hart, a legal positivist, believes that “law is law,” and argued against Radbrunch’s theory in servings as a solution to fix Germany’s judicial system. He argued against his theory and wanted a separation of law and morality because he thought that it would only “cloak the true nature of the problems,” and encourage a “romantic optimism,” rather than addressing the dilemma that the courts had in deciding on convicting Nazi criminals. Though Hart acknowledges that this case poses a difficult situation for the law, he does propose his own solution to the problem. With his positivist approach to the law, saying that the laws are the rules expected of us, and enforced at a particular time, he proposes that the “grudge informer” should be punished through a different and ‘new’ set of laws. These laws he deems “retrospective laws,” would entail punishing acts such as revenge and duplicity. However, this dilemma between choosing if the “grudge informer” was innocent

One key theme of Theodor W. Adorno’s chapter Education After Auschwitz is that society still encourages parts of Nazi psychology. There are still people who are willing to blindly follow leaders that could create similar things to Auschwitz through barbarism and sadism. History and the present are so intertwined that to expect change for the future, one must unpack this past. The book Maus, by Art Spiegelman, highlights that theme of Adorno’s, by showing, on a microscale, how, in Vladek’s story, that Nazi psychology has not ended. By characterizing Nazis as cats and Jews as mice, Spiegelman proves Adorno’s point.

Unlike how many believe, Nazi ideology first stemmed from the Enlightenment period when Germany slowly embraced holistic ideas that were the original tenets of Nazism. This was a result of the shifting of ideas from the idealization of a single person in the Enlightenment period, to the idealization of a nation (Adamson). However, Germany began seeing the “oneness” of foreign values that focused on unity as inadequate and “un-German” (Adamson). In other words, these values were seen as threatening to the traditional system of Germany because it was threatening the existence of the belief of one organism being superior over the other. Due to this, Germany slowly adopted stronger beliefs of Nazi ideology such as racial superiority, anti-semitism, and social darwinism. Diane Ackerman, a naturalist and research, describes these ideologies in her book The Zookeeper’s Wife which describes how a family, the Zabinskis, dealt with the atrocities of the Holocaust while playing a big part in hiding Jews at this time. Through explaining Nazi ideologies through characters and events in her book, Ackerman describes Lutz Heck, a zoologist and animal researcher, and his belief in racial superiority, why Nazi policy towards Jews was anti-semitic, as well as descriptions of Jewish conditions in the Ghetto based off of social darwinism.