Suchergebnisse

For over 700 years Czechs and Germans lived together in those lands which in this century would be consolidated as Czechoslovakia. It was not always a harmonious existence, but a kind of symbiosis did develop which sustained the relationship to the point where one group was unthinkable without the other. All of that changed in the twentieth century in an age characterized by awakening, intolerant ethnic nationalism and total war. Indeed, by the end of the Thirty Years' War of this century, the long Czech-German relationship in Bohemia came to a bitter, and seemingly permanent, end through the expulsion of the Germans of Czechoslovakia.

Though Germans & Czechs had lived together for 700+ years, the leadership of Czechoslovakia & the bulk of the population viewed the Germans as a troublesome minority, & mass expulsion occurred in 1945. The immediate cause of the expulsion was the alleged collaboration of the Germans with Nazi occupiers during the war, but a deeper cause was the ethnic intolerance that had been building within both nationalities since the 1880s. Various phases in the expulsion process are discussed. The impact of the expulsion on the two countries involved was tremendous. The Sudeten Germans became a significant conservative element in the politics of West Germany & kept alive a claim to a Sudeten homeland, while Czechoslovakia was left ripe for subsequent communist takeover & totalitarian rule in 1948. D. Generoli

One of the ideological appeals which the Nazis used to capture the petit-bourgeois and peasant vote in Germany was that of "middle-class socialism." In this catchall term, the alienated "little man" in modern German industrial society saw an expression of both his strong anticapitalist feelings and his yearnings for economic independence. The concept also reflected a romantic proclivity for a preindustrial artisan economy. In directing themselves to these people who felt most ill at ease in modern industrial society, the Nazis promised low interest rates, curbs on big business, benefits to the small entrepreneur, and a return to a society free of large industry, department stores, and a vocal proletariat. The Nazis made this appeal partly for reasons of political expediency, partly because many of Hitler's followers took the tenets of middle-class socialism quite seriously. Several years in power, however, indicated to the more realistic Nazi leaders that it was quite impossible to reincarnate a utopian past in highly industrialized society gearing for war. As a result, after abortive attempts at realizing some of the ideas embodied in middle-class socialism, the Nazi regime made the necessary compromises with big business, and middle-class socialism became pretty much a dead letter. What is seldom realized, however, is that the Nazi regime betrayed middle-class socialism not once, but twice: initially, to economic exigency in the Reich, and then, once again, to political expansion among German ethnic groups outside Germany's borders.

In den 30 Lebensläufen hoher und höchster SS-Führer dieses Bandes spiegelt sich ein facettenreiches Bild des elitebewussten "Ordens unter dem Totenkopf". Diese Gruppe von Männern unterschiedlicher Herkunft bekleidete in der komplexen Herrschafts-Maschinerie des NS-Systems unter Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler hohe Positionen. Die alphabetisch geordneten, von Historikern internationaler Herkunft und Kompetenz verfassten Lebensläufe (u.a. von dem Bach-Zelewski, Best, Eichmann, Hausser, Heydich, Himmler, Höss, Kaltenbrunner, Müller, Pohl, Schellenberg, Wolff) ergeben auf wenigen Seiten nur ein äußeres Bild der jeweiligen Lebensstationen samt bibliographischen Hinweisen, kaum aber Auskunft über Motivationen und Mentalitäten: Keine biografischen Essays also, aber als "Who's Who" der SS-Elite vermitteln sie auf sachliche Weise nützliche Informationen. (2 A) (Friedrich Andrae)