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Ideology and the Application of Law in SS Courts: A Case Study of Legal Practice in the Third Reich
- Peter Scharff Smith, Niels Bo Poulsen, Claus Bundgård Christensen
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- Contemporary European History , First View
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- 03 January 2024, pp. 1-14
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This article provides an empirical study of the inner workings of an institution at the ideological heart of the Nazi state, the SS courts, and analyses how they applied SS law in cases involving unlawful sexual conduct, and how they evaluated the racial characteristics of SS men standing trial. The article demonstrates (1) that the SS courts promoted what has been referred to as an ‘unlimited’, radical ideology. However, the analysis will also reveal how the SS courts during the war (2) gradually climbed down from a position of ideological purity when faced with realities at the front; and (3) despite their ideological core features, in several ways operated as a legal-rational bureaucracy. Towards the end of the article, the ramifications of these findings will be discussed in light of literature concerning the role of law and ideology in the Nazi state and the Third Reich's complicated relationship with modernism.
Psychodynamic Psychiatry Education and Training for Trainee Psychiatrists
- James FitzGerald, Lorna Bo, Fraser Arends, Pamela Peters
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- BJPsych Open / Volume 9 / Issue S1 / July 2023
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- 07 July 2023, p. S21
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Aims
Psychodynamic psychiatry training seminars are a blended supervision and experiential style approach to training health care professionals in reflective practice and formulation. They apply psychodynamic theory through case formulations, seminars, and Balint groups so that health care staff can improve their communication style, formulation skills and enhance their appreciation for patients with complex mental health problems. Our aim is to evaluate the provision of our psychodynamic psychiatry training sessions for psychiatry trainees in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, and to evaluate the perceived benefits of attending in terms of personal and professional development.
MethodsThe evaluation used a standardized mixed-methods approach, with the sample consisting of psychiatry core trainees as part of the regional MRCPsych course. Sessions were delivered via an online format. The evaluation period was between November 2021 and January 2023. Data were gathered via a survey tool, adapted from the literature using Likert scales and free text questions to identify barriers and facilitators to the sessions.
ResultsThe survey collated data from thirty-seven core trainees ranging between CT1 to CT3. The majority of participants (> 90%) scored the sessions positively across the board in terms of the content of session material, length of training, and quality of delivery. The majority of attendees felt the sessions focused on the relevant clinical issues (97%), were relevant to their training (95%), and felt the group was a safe place to express and process anxieties and frustrations about their work (89%). Notably, the majority either agreed or strongly agreed the group had changed the way they think and practice (91%), including an appreciation of the emotional and symbolic aspects of patients' presentations (89%).
ConclusionThis evaluation reports early findings on psychodynamic psychiatry teaching for psychiatry trainees. Overall, the participants felt the sessions were relevant to their training and improved their personal and professional development. Key benefits of the sessions included increased insight into the emotional and symbolic aspects of the patient's symptoms and clinical issues, team working through cohesion, and the humanity of the doctor in the clinical relationship with the patient. This suggests that the sessions provide a much-needed space to process and reflect on the often-intense demands of clinical work and training. The main theme within barriers to the group processes was external in terms of other clinical demands requiring prioritization.
Psychodynamic Psychiatry Education and Training for Health Care Staff in the Acute Hospital Setting
- Lorna Bo, James FitzGerald, Fraser Arends, Pamela Peters
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- BJPsych Open / Volume 9 / Issue S1 / July 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 07 July 2023, p. S21
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Aims
Psychodynamic psychiatry training seminars are a blended supervision and experiential style approach to training health care professionals in reflective practice and formulation. They apply psychodynamic theory through case formulations, seminars, and Balint groups so that healthcare staff can improve their communication style, formulation skills and enhance their appreciation for patients with complex mental health problems. Our aim is to evaluate the provision of our psychodynamic psychiatry training sessions for healthcare staff in the Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust, and to evaluate the perceived benefits of attending in terms of personal and professional development.
MethodsConvenience sampling was used to recruit CUH doctors, nurses, and healthcare assistants at all stages of training as part of their in-house teaching schedule. Sessions were delivered via an online format or in person. The evaluation period was between October 2021 and July 2022. Data were gathered via a survey tool, adapted from the literature using Likert scales and free text questions to identify barriers and facilitators to the sessions
ResultsThirty-three participants responded to our survey, with the sample consisting of gastroenterology (n = 4), acute medicine (n = 6), and emergency medicine doctors (n = 10). The sample also included emergency department nurses (n = 8) and health care assistants (n = 5). included. Most respondents (>90%) described the experience of the sessions including the material covered as ‘Positive’ or ‘Very Positive’. All participants felt they were able to express themselves in the session and the majority (>97%) felt that the sessions were relevant to their training needs and focused on the right issues. Notably, most participants (>88%) felt the sessions enhanced their ability to recognise the importance of the therapeutic relationship, the emotional significance of symptoms as well as the impact of group dynamics on patient's presentations.
ConclusionOur findings suggest that these psychodynamic psychiatry training seminars provide an effective, safe, non-judgemental space for experimentation and interdisciplinary discussion to support healthcare staff management of complex patients. Our results support the expansion of this low-cost, high-value intervention for both the well-being and professional development of healthcare staff.
Chapter One - Introduction
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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- 08 June 2023
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- 01 November 2022, pp 1-6
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Summary
One of the most astonishing paradoxes in modern military history is the fact that, during the Second World War, the extreme racist SS organisation engendered an army, which was possibly the most multi-ethnic and transnational army that the twentieth century ever witnessed. This was brought about by the establishment of a military branch of the SS, the Waffen-SS. During its existence, it expanded from a modest bodyguard at Hitler's disposal to a mass army through whose ranks passed more than a million men. Until the outbreak of war, the SS maintained high standards as to personnel, who were all volunteers. Not only did they have to meet tough physical and racial demands; by joining, they also entered a Nazi order of warriors demanding absolute faith in Hitler, unconditional subordination and profound ideological dedication as the pillars of their martial calling.
The head of the SS, the Reichsfu?hrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, envisaged an e?lite force of devoted Nazis, who would alternate between active duty in the field and other kinds of SS activities. They were not only to be soldiers but also role models leading a life as wholly dedicated SS men. They were to let their identity as members of the ‘order’ permeate all their doings including choice of spouse, reproduction, interior decoration of their homes, and celebration of red-letter days. Himmler hoped to create an elite of committed Nazis, welded together in a loyal brotherhood and hardened through war into merciless individuals, who would pitilessly annihilate the Third Reich's real and alleged enemies; be they hostile troops, Jews, mentally ill or any other so-called sub-humans.
While, until the outbreak of war, this order remained relatively homogeneous, the situation changed markedly during the war. Now, the SS began to moderate the demands on race and physical capability, introduced conscription and started to recruit from all over Europe. With these changes, the SS got new recruits, for example, from Norway, who were often as ideologically zealous as were the original German members. However, men who merely wished to avoid forced labour or were pressured into signing up also joined the ranks – individuals, who might not have heard of the SS before, now saw themselves in the uniform of this organisation. Additionally, there were hundreds of thousands of recruits from ethnic groups, whom the SS would never have admitted before the war.
About the Authors
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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Chapter Fourteen - Prosecution and Flight
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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- 01 November 2022, pp 283-296
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Summary
In March 1945, an American interrogation officer asked Unterscharführer Kurt Kretschmer of Division Das Reich about his division's massacres and other atrocities in Southern France. He replied, ‘I do not know what happened, I was not there.’ The scope of the Nazi crimes made the investigation and prosecution gigantic tasks. In many cases ‘a perfect crime’ was at hand. Apart from the perpetrators, there were hardly any surviving witnesses. But even if evidence was extant it was uncertain that this would fall into the hands of the prosecutors and the judges. In the early processes, the war and the chaos of the times were still so close that the prosecution lacked a proper survey and the knowledge that later historical research based on archival material has been able to provide. Under these conditions, the perpetrators had an opportunity of lying their way out of their complicity in a way that would not be possible today.
Apart from being faced with an enormous burden of investigation, the Allies were hampered by big politics and the economic and military interests. In many cases, political-pragmatic considerations took precedence over the judicial processes. Therefore, the prosecution of the Nazi henchmen was imperfect in more than one way. First, because some sentences were passed on the basis of limited investigation and documentation. Secondly, because of limited resources or political consideration, many perpetrators were either not prosecuted at all, had very mild sentences or were granted amnesties.
The Sentence at Nuremberg
In November 1945, in the South-German city of Nuremberg, the Allies started the legal reckoning with the Nazi top tier. Over the following year, not only 22 surviving top Nazis but also the entire administrative and political system constructed by the Nazis, were being prosecuted. The tribunal had the authority to sentence whole institutions and organisations as criminals. The reason for this was to ease later prosecution of individual persons; hence the membership of such bodies would in itself become a criminal act. From 1 September to 1 October 1946, the sentences were passed: 12 death sentences, seven imprisonments and three acquittals, the NSDAP, the Gestapo, the SD and the SS were declared criminal organisations.
Along with other SS organisations, the Waffen-SS was dealt with in this sentence. In their testimonies, General Hausser and others tried to convince the court that the Waffen-SS was the fourth service of the Wehrmacht, completely separate from the SS.
Chapter Thirteen - Surrender and Imprisonment
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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Summary
It was far from all SS soldiers who were prepared to die for Hitler and Nazism. In March 1945, the western Allies crossed the Rhine, and the following month the Soviet offensive against Berlin was launched. No one doubted any longer that the downfall of the Third Reich was imminent. Thus, as a soldier of the Reich one might choose to go down with the regime or try to survive either by surrendering oneself to the Allies or by deserting.
During the last days of the war, the German SS men fought primarily in their own country and might hope to return to civilian life when the war was over. The foreign Waffen-SS soldiers’ situation was different; many of them would be facing trial in their home countries. Nonetheless, many perceived prosecution at home as preferable compared to falling into the hands of the Red Army, for example by seeking refuge in the remaining embassies in Berlin, such as the Danish and Swedish. These endeavours were not particularly successful, but many succeeded in avoiding capture in various other ways. From the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, Baltic Waffen-SS soldiers got across to the Swedish coast or to Denmark and mixed with refugees. At the moment of surrender, other non-German SS men hurried into civvies pretending to be forced labourers, or they hid with friends, family, or girlfriends.
The extent to which the former SS soldiers managed to hide may be illustrated by the case of the 1st SS brigade. During post-war legal processes in West Germany, almost 1,000 former members of the unit were asked about their spell as prisoners-of-war, and it turned out that 10 per cent had completely avoided incarceration. Considering their war record as continuous participants in genocide it comes as no surprise that former members of the 1st SS brigade would do whatever it took to evade captivity. Those who, like the 1st SS brigade, belonged among the very worst henchmen of the Holocaust, were of course especially tempted to try to assume new identities during their imprisonment or simply lie low vis-à-vis the victors. Through listening to radio, Allied broadcasts, or the Nazis’ own propaganda, there was an awareness that the Allies had an ambitious agenda of bringing Nazi culprits to justice and that SS men were very much in the allied spotlight.
Contents
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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Index
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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- 01 November 2022, pp 357-367
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Chapter Six - Sexuality, Race and Religion: Ideology in Practise
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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- 01 November 2022, pp 119-128
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Summary
The ideological SS universe helps us better understand the actions of the SS men, including the way they rationalized their war crimes and atrocities – a theme we will return to in a later chapter on Waffen-SS atrocities. The question of how ideology influenced and shaped practice at the front is, however, broader and even more complex as we shall see in the following.
Racial Differentiation at the Front
Moving eastwards, the soldiers of the Third Reich faced various ethnic groups which caused countless ideologically motivated reactions among the Waffen-SS men. In October 1941, for example, a Norwegian soldier in the Wiking division informed in a letter that he had lately been guarding POWs, most of whom were Ukrainians. Among these, he found that there was “much strangeness to behold” and continued:
Here were the most peculiar, diverse and ugly characters I have ever met. Occasionally one would encounter a fair-skinned Germanic type (maybe a descendant of a Norwegian Viking?). Otherwise, mainly small, black, unassuming men. Especially those representing the Asiatic Mongol type were a hideous lot.
A report from the second SS Cavalry Regiment August 1941 on the massacre in the Pripet Marshes also made a point of distinguishing different groups from each other. Here, the Ukrainians made a relatively good impression: ‘although they were small, they all were of a harmonious figure and build and had a clear look’. As was the case in the Pripet Marshes, such race evaluations could have drastic consequences for the locals. An order from Himmler's personal command staff stated that areas populated by völkisch Germans or Ukrainians, where they did not like the Poles and the Russians, were to be protected. Conversely, where the population was friendly towards the Poles or were ‘racially and humanly inferior’ everyone under suspicion of supporting partisans should be shot and their villages torched. Thus, in this and similar cases a racial distinction was made between the so-called sub-humans and those who might not be Volksdeutsche or Germanic, but were deemed racially acceptable to a degree where their lives were preserved.
Naturally, racial differentiation also applied to the SS internally. In the summer of 1943, for instance, general Steiner instructed his armoured corps to place emphasis on racial and physical appearance when selecting officer material.
Part II - Ideology, Discipline and Punishment in the Waffen-SS
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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- 01 November 2022, pp 105-106
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Chapter Two - From Hitler’s Bodyguard to the Waffen-SS
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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- 01 November 2022, pp 9-38
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Summary
After the defeat in the First World War, Germany was marred by considerable polarisation and by the presence and activities of para-military organisations. Economic chaos and extensive poverty together with street fights, political assassinations and coup-d’etat attempts characterised life in the Weimar Republic of 1918. Shortly after the foundation in 1920 of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) Hitler became leader. It was one of the political parties, which employed violence in its political struggle most determinedly. In the beginning, the NSDAP engaged various paramilitary organisations to protect their own meetings and harass those of other parties. However, gradually the party developed its own body of Nazi street bullies, the SA. Perhaps the most important sub-division of this organisation was the Stoßtrupp Adolf Hitler. At the same time, Hitler had a small number of men for his personal protection – the Stabswache (staff close protection team). The Stoßtrupp and the Stabswache would guard the party meetings and bully gate crashers, and the roots of the Schutzstaffel can be traced back to these units. Like the general SA and other Nazi organisations, these entities were dissolved in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923.
After Hitler's release from prison in the spring of 1925, his bodyguard was re-formed under Julius Schreck. This Munich-based team of merely eight men was soon to be re-designated the Schutzstaffel, and Schreck would become the first in a succession of SS leaders. Although, generally, the Nazis were very inspired by the inter-war paramilitary organisations, using the word Staffel was original. The word originated with the German army which used it to designate minor mounted, motorised or flying detachments. In September 1925, Hitler ordered Schreck to raise, and assume command of, a network of similar detachments all over Germany. Each Staffel should consist of ten men selected among the most trustworthy local party members. These were raised in a number of German cities, and in 1926 there were 26 such SS units in Germany.
Schreck was a devoted Nazi, but his organisational and political skills were mediocre and the newly formed SS units were weak. Thus, as early as 1926, Hitler dismissed him from his post. The new boss was the founder of Stoßtrupp Adolf Hitler, Joseph Berchtold, who soon replaced his title as Oberleiter (senior leader) der SS by Reichsführer-SS. Berchtold was considerably more activist than Schreck.
Chapter Sixteen - The Waffen-SS in Post-War Remembrance Culture
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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- 01 November 2022, pp 311-322
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Summary
The year is 1944, a section of Waffen-SS soldiers of SS-Panzer-Grenadier Regiment 24 ‘Danmark’ are on patrol in the Oranienbaum Pocket. All of them are clad in SS uniforms and armed with rifles or machine guns. It is twilight and everything is calm. Prepared for action, the SS men steal forward searching for partisans. But wait a minute – there is something entirely amiss in chronology and geography. In fact, these are young men in a forest in Northern Zealand, and the year is 2013. They are re-enactors, members of Fronthistorisk Forening Danmark (the Society for Front History, Denmark) claiming to be re-enacting history.
Today, most SS veterans have passed away, but the Waffen-SS survives in the cultural practices through which we commemorate and understand the past, such as the above-described re-enactment episode. In the contemporary world, Himmler's black corps simultaneously serves as an important signifier among extremist right-wing groups, as a rallying point in the nation-building processes in certain east European countries, as an ingredient in pop-culture and as a symbol of the darkest sides of twentieth-century history. In mainstream political culture Nazism and its symbols, especially the swastika and the SS runes, have come to represent the antithesis of democratic values. The story of the Third Reich and the SS in the words of Alec Ryrie thus serves an important role in contemporary western society:
It was the struggle against Nazism which crystallised that great modern act of faith, ‘human rights’, which we all believe in even if we struggle to justify it philosophically. So when we retell that struggle, we reinforce and defend the sacred story on which our collective values depend.
While this observation is valid regarding the overall political culture of western societies, there are important undercurrents where wholly different perspectives on the Waffen-SS live on. This chapter offers an introduction to the diverse ways in which the history of the Waffen-SS is used today.
Notions of the Waffen-SS
During the war, in the occupied countries, there was a general impression of Nazi collaborators as pathological deviants. The early post-war literature reinforced this notion by demonising the SS as the hub of Nazi crime. At the same time, there were many who attempted to delimit the SS, and by implication, the Waffen-SS, from the German population per se, in order to save the latter from accusations of complicity in war crimes.
List of Abbreviations
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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Frontmatter
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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Chapter Ten - Eastern European Waffen-SS Soldiers of Non-German Ethnicity
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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- 01 November 2022, pp 199-224
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Summary
The research of the soldiers in the Waffen-SS has by and large been focused on those who were recruited in the North-western European Germanic countries, such as Holland and Scandinavia. As we have discussed these volunteers had strong ideological motives and to a large extent came from Fascist or Right-Wing extremist groups in their home countries. The same tendency can also be found among soldiers from other parts of Europe such as France and Italy, but in these cases, and even more so when it comes to Eastern Europeans in the Waffen-SS the reasons behind their entry was complex: coercion and material factors in many cases played a much bigger role than ideological motivation. These groups have until relatively recently remained in the periphery of research and have not attracted the same scholarly attention as, for instance, the Scandinavian volunteers. In his classic 1966 study, George Stein included a chapter about the Baltic and Muslim volunteers. He concluded that these units, except the three divisions raised in the Baltic States, were practically useless in combat, even when it came to less demanding anti-partisan tasks. Published a few years later, Alexander Dallin's essay The Kaminsky Brigade: A Case-Study of Soviet Disaffection was an in-depth study of a single unit, whose members were recruited in Russia. Apart from Stein's monograph and Dallin's essay, the Waffen-SS soldiers from Eastern Europe were a virtually untouched subject by academic scholars studying the Third Reich until a few notable studies have surfaced during the last two decades. The East European soldiers in German armed service did receive some attention earlier from authors with an interest in obscure military units or from revisionist far right historians. A third approach was offered by scholars from émigré groups studying the history of their nation under Soviet and Nazi domination. They often tended to neglect or downplay the fact that many (but far from all) east Europeans in German armed service fought within the SS in favour of an uncritical and heroic interpretations of the soldiers as reluctant cannon fodder or misguided idealist who merely fought for their nation's survival. Thus, several books written from this perspective treated the subject of collaboration with Nazi Germany and the SS as a minor one, within a greater theme of national assertion and survival for small nations squeezed between the great powers Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Chapter Twelve - Explaining the Atrocities: Context and Motives
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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Summary
The winter of 1941–1942 was tough on the German troops employed in the Demyansk Pocket, but it was still worse for the Soviet civilians who suffered from the extremes of hunger, cold and lack of shelter. This, however, made no impression on Theodor Eicke, the general-officer-commanding Division Totenkopf. In January 1942, in one of the division's journals, he encouraged his soldiers to see the locals the way Heinrich Heine's forlorn grenadier did in a poem: ‘What do I care for the woman, what do I care for the child. I have higher aspirations. Let them go begging if they are hungry.’ Being a Nazi Altkämpfer, Eicke undoubtedly represented the most ideologically committed segment of the Waffen-SS but there is no doubt that Nazi ideology played a central role in the justification and rationalization of the crimes committed by many an SS soldier. However, other factors were also at play, including, for example, career ambitions, peer pressure, dispersal of responsibility and the general brutalization of war. The present chapter offers an analysis of how these various components may help us understand how the monstrous atrocities described in the Chapter 11 could take place.
The early research of Nazi crimes tended to demonize the perpetrators, and portray them as deviants, psychopaths and sadists with a particular proclivity for authoritarianism. Later research tended to emphasize structural explanations such as, for example, Bauman's famous interpretation of the Holocaust being a product primarily of bureaucratic and dehumanizing decision-making in a modern rational state. Detailed empirical historical accounts have since clearly demonstrated how face-to-face killings and executions committed by soldiers and guards in German uniforms remained a central genocidal practice throughout the war and throughout the Nazi territories, something which cannot be explained solely by looking at bureaucratic procedures and mechanisms. Furthermore, a number of sociological, psychological and historical studies have demonstrated how all the perpetrators of mass violence and killings during the Second World War were generally quite ordinary people and not deviants in any particular way. Their deeds were not a product of pathological personalities, but were rather the results of the extreme environment and culture within which they operated. Important factors were conformism and loyalty to their co-killers, the role of authority figures and careerism as well as – not least – acceptance and internalisation of Nazi ideology and the consequent dehumanisation of the victims.
War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
- The Waffen-SS, 1933 to Today
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Niels Bo Poulsen , Peter Scharff Smith
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This book presents the most comprehensive study of the Waffen-SS until this date. Based on archival studies done in more than twenty archives in thirteen different countries over a period of five years the book covers the entire history of the Waffen-SS and follows the post-war fate of the SS-veterans as well. The evolution of the Waffen-SS is analysed with special emphasis on the role of Nazi ideology, war crimes and atrocities, as well as the unique multi-ethnic and transnational character of the organization.
Foreword
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
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Summary
The work behind this book began more than 25 years ago when we, the authors, were young history students at Roskilde University in Denmark. During our studies we came across the fact that thousands of Danes (how many was unknown at the time) had joined the Waffen-SS and chosen to fight for Hitler during the second world war. Yet no one had examined the history of these men whose actions so obviously ran counter to the many stories of resistance fighters and the rescue of the Danish Jews that we had been brought up with. In contrast, the academic, and indeed the national, interest in those who had chosen the wrong side was almost non-existing. This caught our common interest to a great degree and we chose to study this phenomenon.
Starting out as students we spend four very exiting years interviewing former SS-soldiers, and digging through archives in Germany, the Czech Republic, Russia, Sweden and Denmark in an attempt to locate the Danish volunteers in the vast machinery of the Third Reich. It was sometimes like looking for a needle in a haystack and with little money in our student pockets we spend many nights at youth hostels around Europe while researching huge amounts of Nazi records in different archives during the day. Remembering those days together now, when finishing this book, makes us smile as we think back on the immense amounts of time and energy that we were able to dedicate to our academic endeavours in that early phase of our lives. In 1998, we published a book on the Danish volunteers in the Waffen-SS for the first time documenting, among other things, how these Danes had committed war crimes and in various ways contributed to the Nazi war of extermination.
We also realised from the start that the Waffen-SS was an organization that could tell us something unique about human behaviour and the power of ideology and hence we continued our research. We kept finding new material about the SS-men from a wide range of sources including not only official archives but also private collectors who, for example, had diaries and letters written by soldiers at the front. In 2008, we decided that the time had come to apply for funding for a full-scale study of the entire Waffen-SS.
Chapter Nine - ‘Volksdeutsche’ in the Waffen-SS
- Claus Bundgård Christensen, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark, Niels Bo Poulsen , Dänische Verteidigungsakademie, Denmark, Peter Scharff Smith, Universitetet i Oslo
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- Book:
- War, Genocide and Cultural Memory
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 08 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 01 November 2022, pp 187-198
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- Chapter
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Summary
In the mid-1930s, 10 million ethnic Germans lived in countries outside the three great, totally or partially, Germanophone states, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The most important, in this respect, were Czechoslovakia, the USSR and Poland, followed by the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine. Additionally, there were Germanophones in Yugoslavia, Romania, Hungary and Italy (Alto Adige), as well as in the Baltic countries, eastern Belgium, and in southern Denmark.
From a Nazi point of view, all these groups – the Volksdeutsche – were of ‘German blood’ and, ideally, ought to be united in a Greater German Reich. However, the right to speak on behalf of the German minorities was fraught with internal struggles over power and responsibilities among various Nazi institutions. The primary contenders were Alfred Rosenberg's Außenpolitisches Amt (APA), the party's foreign department, Auslands-Organisation der NSDAP (AO) and not least the foreign ministry, Auswärtiges Amt, under Joachim von Ribbentrop. The latter forged an alliance with Himmler and the SS in order to clip the wings of APA, Rosenberg and AO. Moreover, a number of private organisations wielded their influence. One of these the Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland was an establishment that, since the days of the Weimar Republic, was co-operating with the German state.
In 1935, Rudolf Hess, Hitler's party deputy, ordered that a new party office be set up to cover this area. The SS member, Otto von Kursell, became head of this office. While he purposively implemented the Gleichschaltung – Nazi regimentation – of the organisations of the German minorities, he tried to keep aloof of the conflicts. To Himmler, the appointment of Kursell became a means to increase the influence of the SS and, gradually, his office managed to out-manoeuvre other players in this field. In 1936, however, a disagreement arose between Kursell and Himmler. Consequently, in 1937, Kursell was dismissed as the head of the office, which, from then onwards, was designated Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VOMI).
Although VOMI was never integrated in the SS, in reality, from the mid-1930s, it functioned as a de facto SS office with Himmler as the top boss. Like his predecessor, the new head, Werner Lorenz, as well as his chief of staff, Hermann Behrends, were highranking SS officers. In particular after Himmler's appointment as Reichskommissarfür die Festigungdeutschen Volkstums in 1939, VOMI became involved, under SS control, in activities concerning Volksdeutsche in the occupied countries – predominantly recruitment for the Waffen-SS.