DOCSLIB.ORG

German Captured Documents Collection

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
German Captured Documents Collection German Captured Documents Collection A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress Prepared by Allan Teichroew, Fred Bauman, Karen Stuart, and other Manuscript Division Staff with the assistance of David Morris and Alex Sorenson Manuscript Division, Library of Congress Washington, D.C. 2011 Contact information: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress Manuscript Division, 2011 Finding aid URL: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms011148 Latest revision: 2012 October Collection Summary Title: German Captured Documents Collection Span Dates: 1766-1945 ID No.: MSS22160 Extent: 249,600 items ; 51 containers plus 3 oversize ; 20.5 linear feet ; 508 microfilm reels Language: Collection material in German with some English and French Repository: Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Abstract: German documents captured by American military forces after World War II consisting largely of Nazi Party materials, German government and military records, files of several German officials, and some quasi-governmental records. Much of the material is microfilm of originals returned to Germany. Selected Search Terms The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein. People Wiedemann, Fritz, b. 1891. Fritz Wiedemann papers. Organizations Akademie für Deutsches Recht (Germany) Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund. Deutsches Ausland-Institut. Eher-Verlag. Archiv. Germany. Auswärtiges Amt. Germany. Reichskanzlei. Germany. Reichsministerium für die Besetzten Ostgebiete. Germany. Reichsministerium für Rüstung und Kriegsproduktion. Germany. Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. Germany. Reichspatentamt. Germany. Reichspostministerium. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. Schutzstaffel. Rehse Archiv für Zeitgeschichte und Publizistik. Subjects World War, 1939-1945--Germany. Administrative Information Provenance The German Captured Documents Collection consists of material captured by American military forces in Germany after World War II. In 1992 the Library agreed to return all captured German material in the Manuscript Division that the Bundesarchiv of the Federal Republic of Germany wanted for its holdings or for transfer to other German archives. German archivists identified the material to be returned and underwrote the cost of filming by the Library's Photoduplication Service. The collection was filmed in stages over the next few years and the last installment was filmed in 1991. Some original materials remain in the Manuscript Division because they were not wanted by the Bundesarchiv. As each installment was filmed, the originals were sent to the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. Much material from the Manuscript Division and other Library collections was returned in earlier years. Machinery was established by 1951 to return any collections or individual publications that belonged to legitimate private organizations or governmental agencies. Many collections of books and serials were returned as early as 1948 to individuals, the German government, public and private libraries, and a labor union. All returns were approved by the State Department. German Captured Documents Collection 2 Additional Guides For many years, the sole access to the collection was Gerhard L. Weinberg's Guide to Captured German Documents (Columbia University, Bureau of Applied Social Research, 1952). It can no longer be used for sequence, but as it is indexed it still provides specific information. Processing History The collection was processed beginning with its receipt in the late 1940s. Revisions and additions were made as material was transferred into or out of the collection from other divisions of the Library or other institutions. The current finding aid was produced in 1989 and revised in 2011. Transfers Approximately half of the German material received by the Library of Congress was transferred to other libraries in the United States by 1951. Much of the material retained at the Library consisted of publications that were absorbed into the general collections and thus were ineligible for return. Related Material Related captured German documents in the Library include technical reports collected by American and British research teams during and after World War II and organized in the Science, Technology and Business Division as the PB Historical Collection. For information consult Science Reference Services in the Science, Technology and Business Division and http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/trspb.html. Copyright Status It is the researcher's responsibility to determine requirements of domestic copyright laws and international treaties and conventions. Access and Restrictions The German Captured Documents collection is open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Manuscript Reading Room prior to visiting. Many collections are stored off-site and advance notice is needed to retrieve these items for research use. Microfilm A microfilm edition of this collection is available on 508 reels. Consult reference staff in the Manuscript Division concerning availability for purchase or interlibrary loan. To promote preservation of the originals, researchers are required to consult the microfilm edition as available. Preferred Citation Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container or reel number, German Captured Documents Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Introduction to the German Captured Documents on Microfilm In the fall of 1982, the Library of Congress and the Bundesarchiv of the Federal Republic of Germany agreed to an exchange arrangement involving these documents. The collection was to be microfilmed in a sequence selected by the Bundesarchiv, and, following the completion of segments of the film, the originals were to be delivered to the Bundesarchiv. The Manuscript Division prepared the selected material for the camera, and the following shelflist is a product of that work. The researcher should be aware that Gerhard L. Weinberg's Guide to Captured German Documents (Columbia University, Bureau of Applied Social Research, 1952), which for years was the sole access tool to the collection, can no longer be used for sequence but as it is indexed it still provides specific information. Containers may be traced by the conversion chart preceding the shelflist. The chart, which is arranged by former container number, converts the former number to the new container that went to the camera. German Captured Documents Collection 3 Microfilmed Segments, Shelf no. 18,806 Reels New Container Numbers 1*-62 1-131 63*-118 132-215 119*-182 216-288 183*-239 289-398 240*-298 399-487 299*-334 488-534 335*-382 535-629 383*-443 630-758 * (reels with asterisks contain the shelflist for the span of reels or segment) Arrangement of the Records This collection is arranged in thirty-seven series: • Reichskanzlei • Reichsministerium Für Die Besetzten Ostgebiete • Reichspostministerium • Reichsministerium Für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda • Auswärtiges Amt • Reichsministerium Für Rüstung Und Kriegsproduktion • Akademie Für Deutsches Recht • Reichspatentamt • Reichsforschungsrat • Kreishauptmann Miechow/Stadthauptmann Lublin • Deutsche Auslands-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft Interradio AG • SS- Und Polizeiakten • Akten Der NSDAP • Militärische Akten (Including Submarine Materials) • Akten DerR NSDAP • Schriftgut Aus Der Zuständigkeit Der Länder • Reichsforschungsrat • Rehse Collection (Including Adolf Hitler Collection) • Eher Verlag Collection • Miscellaneous Collection • Deutsches Ausland-Institut Collection • Haushofer Papers • Anton Schäfer Papers • Deutsches Ausland-Institut, Stuttgart • Fritz Wiedemann Papers • Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund • Sonderdienst Seehaus • Zimmermann Family Papers • Nachlass Ella Triebnigg-Pinchkert • Arnold Brüggemann Papers • Zimmermann Family Papers • Anton Schäfer Papers • Deutsches Ausland Institut • Auswärtiges Amt • Deutsches Ausland-Institut • Gerdy and Paul Troost Papers • Miscellany German Captured Documents Collection 4 Description of Series Container Series BOX 1 Reichskanzlei REEL 1 BOX 2-15 Reichsministerium Für Die Besetzten Ostgebiete REEL 1-8 BOX 16-40 Reichspostministerium REEL 8-17 BOX 41-44 Reichsministerium Für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda REEL 18-20 BOX 45 Auswärtiges Amt REEL 20 BOX 46 Reichsministerium Für Rüstung Und Kriegsproduktion REEL 21 BOX 47-48 Akademie Für Deutsches Recht REEL 21-22 BOX 49 Reichspatentamt REEL 22-23 BOX 50 Reichsforschungsrat REEL 23 BOX 51 Kreishauptmann Miechow/Stadthauptmann Lublin REEL 23 BOX 52-72 Deutsche Auslands-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft Interradio AG REEL 24-30 BOX 73-133 SS- Und Polizeiakten REEL 30-62 BOX 134-149 Akten Der NSDAP REEL 63-70 BOX 150-182 Militärische Akten (Including Submarine Materials) REEL 70-90 BOX 183 Akten DerR NSDAP REEL 91 BOX 184-196 Schriftgut Aus Der Zuständigkeit Der Länder REEL 92-99 German Captured Documents Collection 5 BOX 197-232 Reichsforschungsrat REEL 100-136 BOX 233-277 Rehse Collection (Including Adolf Hitler Collection) REEL 137-170 BOX 278-282 Eher Verlag Collection REEL 171-174 BOX 283 Miscellaneous Collection REEL 175 BOX 284-291 Deutsches Ausland-Institut Collection REEL 176-185 BOX 292 Haushofer Papers REEL 186 BOX 293 Anton Schäfer
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The German-American Bund: Fifth Column Or
    -41 THE GERMAN-AMERICAN BUND: FIFTH COLUMN OR DEUTSCHTUM? THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By James E. Geels, B. A. Denton, Texas August, 1975 Geels, James E., The German-American Bund: Fifth Column or Deutschtum? Master of Arts (History), August, 1975, 183 pp., bibliography, 140 titles. Although the German-American Bund received extensive press coverage during its existence and monographs of American politics in the 1930's refer to the Bund's activities, there has been no thorough examination of the charge that the Bund was a fifth column organization responsible to German authorities. This six-chapter study traces the Bund's history with an emphasis on determining the motivation of Bundists and the nature of the relationship between the Bund and the Third Reich. The conclusions are twofold. First, the Third Reich repeatedly discouraged the Bundists and attempted to dissociate itself from the Bund. Second, the Bund's commitment to Deutschtum through its endeavors to assist the German nation and the Third Reich contributed to American hatred of National Socialism. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION... ....... 1 II. DEUTSCHTUM.. ......... 14 III. ORIGIN AND IMAGE OF THE GERMAN- ... .50 AMERICAN BUND............ IV. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE BUND AND THE THIRD REICH....... 82 V. INVESTIGATION OF THE BUND. 121 VI. CONCLUSION.. ......... 161 APPENDIX....... .............. ..... 170 BIBLIOGRAPHY......... ...........
    [Show full text]
  • German Hegemony and the Socialist International's Place in Interwar
    02_EHQ 31/1 articles 30/11/00 1:53 pm Page 101 William Lee Blackwood German Hegemony and the Socialist International’s Place in Interwar European Diplomacy When the guns fell silent on the western front in November 1918, socialism was about to become a governing force throughout Europe. Just six months later, a Czech socialist could marvel at the convocation of an international socialist conference on post- war reconstruction in a Swiss spa, where, across the lake, stood buildings occupied by now-exiled members of the deposed Habsburg ruling class. In May 1923, as Europe’s socialist parties met in Hamburg, Germany, finally to put an end to the war-induced fracturing within their ranks by launching a new organization, the Labour and Socialist International (LSI), the German Communist Party’s main daily published a pull-out flier for posting on factory walls. Bearing the sarcastic title the International of Ministers, it presented to workers a list of forty-one socialists and the national offices held by them in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Poland, France, Sweden, and Denmark. Commenting on the activities of the LSI, in Paris a Russian Menshevik émigré turned prominent left-wing pundit scoffed at the new International’s executive body, which he sarcastically dubbed ‘the International Socialist Cabinet’, since ‘all of its members were ministers, ex-ministers, or prospec- tive ministers of State’.1 Whether one accepted or rejected its new status, socialism’s virtually overnight transformation from an outsider to a consummate insider at the end of Europe’s first total war provided the most striking measure of the quantum leap into what can aptly be described as Europe’s ‘social democratic moment’.2 Moreover, unlike the period after Europe’s second total war, when many of socialism’s basic postulates became permanently embedded in the post-1945 social-welfare-state con- European History Quarterly Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • The Monita Secreta Or, As It Was Also Known As, The
    James Bernauer, S.J. Boston College From European Anti-Jesuitism to German Anti-Jewishness: A Tale of Two Texts “Jews and Jesuits will move heaven and hell against you.” --Kurt Lüdecke, in conversation with Adolf Hitleri A Presentation at the Conference “Honoring Stanislaw Musial” Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (March 5, 2009) The current intense debate about the significance of “political religion” as a mode of analyzing fascism leads us to the core of the crisis in understanding the Holocaust.ii Saul Friedländer has written of an “historian‟s paralysis” that “arises from the simultaneity and the interaction of entirely heterogeneous phenomena: messianic fanaticism and bureaucratic structures, pathological impulses and administrative decrees, archaic attitudes within an advanced industrial society.”iii Despite the conflicting voices in the discussion of political religion, the debate does acknowledge two relevant facts: the obvious intermingling in Nazism of religious and secular phenomena; secondly, the underestimated role exercised by Munich Catholicism in the early life of the Nazi party.iv My essay is an effort to illumine one thread in this complex territory of political religion and Nazism and my title conveys its hypotheses. First, that the centuries long polemic against the Roman Catholic religious order the Jesuits, namely, its fabrication of the Jesuit image as cynical corrupter of Christianity and European culture, provided an important template for the Nazi imagining of Jewry after its emancipation.v This claim will be exhibited in a consideration of two historically influential texts: the Monita 1 secreta which demonized the Jesuits and the Protocols of the Sages of Zion which diabolized the Jews.vi In the light of this examination, I shall claim that an intermingled rhetoric of Jesuit and Jewish wills to power operated in the imagination of some within the Nazi leadership, the most important of whom was Adolf Hitler himself.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Title: Daring Missions of World War II Author: William B. Breuer ISBN: 0-471-40419-5 Introduction World war ii, the mightiest endeavor that history has known, was fought in many arenas other than by direct confrontation between opposing forces. One of the most significant of these extra dimensions was a secret war-within-a-war that raged behind enemy lines, a term that refers to actions taken a short dis- tance to the rear of an adversary’s battlefield positions or as far removed as a foe’s capital or major headquarters. Relentlessly, both sides sought to penetrate each other’s domain to dig out intelligence, plant rumors, gain a tactical advantage, spread propaganda, create confusion, or inflict mayhem. Many ingenious techniques were employed to infiltrate an antagonist’s territory, including a platoon of German troops dressed as women refugees and pushing baby carriages filled with weapons to spearhead the invasion of Belgium. Germans also wore Dutch uniforms to invade Holland. The Nazi attack against Poland was preceded by German soldiers dressed as civilians and by others wearing Polish uniforms. In North Africa, British sol- diers masqueraded as Germans to strike at enemy airfields, and both sides dressed as Arabs on occasion. One British officer in Italy disguised himself as an Italian colonel to get inside a major German headquarters and steal vital information. In the Pacific, an American sergeant of Japanese descent put on a Japan- ese officer’s uniform, sneaked behind opposing lines, and brought back thir- teen enemy soldiers who had obeyed his order to lay down their weapons.
    [Show full text]
  • Guides to German Records Microfilmed at Alexandria, Va
    GUIDES TO GERMAN RECORDS MICROFILMED AT ALEXANDRIA, VA. No. 32. Records of the Reich Leader of the SS and Chief of the German Police (Part I) The National Archives National Archives and Records Service General Services Administration Washington: 1961 This finding aid has been prepared by the National Archives as part of its program of facilitating the use of records in its custody. The microfilm described in this guide may be consulted at the National Archives, where it is identified as RG 242, Microfilm Publication T175. To order microfilm, write to the Publications Sales Branch (NEPS), National Archives and Records Service (GSA), Washington, DC 20408. Some of the papers reproduced on the microfilm referred to in this and other guides of the same series may have been of private origin. The fact of their seizure is not believed to divest their original owners of any literary property rights in them. Anyone, therefore, who publishes them in whole or in part without permission of their authors may be held liable for infringement of such literary property rights. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 58-9982 AMERICA! HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION COMMITTEE fOR THE STUDY OP WAR DOCUMENTS GUIDES TO GERMAN RECOBDS MICROFILMED AT ALEXAM)RIA, VA. No* 32» Records of the Reich Leader of the SS aad Chief of the German Police (HeiehsMhrer SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei) 1) THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION (AHA) COMMITTEE FOR THE STUDY OF WAE DOCUMENTS GUIDES TO GERMAN RECORDS MICROFILMED AT ALEXANDRIA, VA* This is part of a series of Guides prepared
    [Show full text]
  • Wolfgang Stelbrink: Die Kreisleiter Der NSDAP in Westfalen Und Lippe
    Die Kreisleiter der NSDAP in Westfalen und Lippe VERÖFFENTLICHUNGEN DER STAATLICHEN ARCHIVE DES LANDES NORDRHEIN-WESTFALEN REIHE C: QUELLEN UND FORSCHUNGEN BAND 48 IM AUFTRAG DES MINISTERIUMS FÜR STÄDTEBAU UND WOHNEN, KULTUR UND SPORT HERAUSGEGEBEN VOM NORDRHEIN-WESTFÄLISCHEN STAATSARCHIV MÜNSTER Die Kreisleiter der NSDAP in Westfalen und Lippe Versuch einer Kollektivbiographie mit biographischem Anhang von Wolfgang Stelbrink Münster 2003 Wolfgang Stelbrink Die Kreisleiter der NSDAP in Westfalen und Lippe Versuch einer Kollektivbiographie mit biographischem Anhang Münster 2003 Die Deutsche Bibliothek – CIP Eigenaufnahme Die Kreisleiter der NSDAP in Westfalen und Lippe im Auftr. des Ministeriums für Städtebau und Wohnung, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-West- falen hrsg. vom Nordrhein-Westfälischen Staatsarchiv Münster. Bearb. von Wolfgang Stelbrink - Münster: Nordrhein-Westfälischen Staatsarchiv Münster, 2003 (Veröffentlichung der staatlichen Archive des Landes Nordrein-Westfalen: Reihe C, Quellen und Forschung; Bd. 48) ISBN: 3–932892–14–3 © 2003 by Nordrhein-Westfälischen Staatsarchiv, Münster Alle Rechte an dieser Buchausgabe vorbehalten, insbesondere das Recht des Nachdruckes und der fotomechanischen Wiedergabe, auch auszugsweise, des öffentlichen Vortrages, der Übersetzung, der Übertragung, auch einzelner Teile, durch Rundfunk und Fernsehen sowie der Übertragung auf Datenträger. Druck: DIP-Digital-Print, Witten Satz: Peter Fröhlich, NRW Staatsarchiv Münster Vertrieb: Nordrhein-Westfälischen Staatsarchiv Münster, Bohlweg 2, 48147
    [Show full text]
  • Tangled Complicities and Moral Struggles: the Haushofers, Father and Son, and the Spaces of Nazi Geopolitics
    Journal of Historical Geography 47 (2015) 64e73 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Historical Geography journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhg Feature: European Geographers and World War II Tangled complicities and moral struggles: the Haushofers, father and son, and the spaces of Nazi geopolitics Trevor J. Barnes a,* and Christian Abrahamsson b a Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada b Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Postboks 1096 Blindern, Oslo 0317, Norway Abstract Drawing on a biographical approach, the paper explores the tangled complicities and morally fraught relationship between the German father and son political geographers, Karl and Albrecht Haushofer, and the Nazi leadership. From the 1920s both Haushofers were influential within Nazism, although at different periods and under different circumstances. Karl Haushofer’s complicity began in 1919 with his friendship with Rudolf Hess, an undergraduate student he taught political geography at the University of Munich. Hess introduced Haushofer to Adolf Hitler the following year. In 1924 Karl provided jail-house instruction in German geopolitical theory to both men while they served an eight-and-a-half month prison term for treason following the ‘beer-hall putsch’ of November 1923. Karl’s prison lectures were significant because during that same period Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. In that tract, Hitler justifies German expansionism using Lebensraum, one of Haushofer’s key ideas. It is here that there is a potential link between German geopolitics and the subsequent course of the Second World War. Albrecht Haushofer’s complicity began in the 1930s when he started working as a diplomat for Joachim von Ribbentrop in a think-tank within the Nazi Foreign Ministry.
    [Show full text]
  • The Return of the Auslandsdeutscheto Germany in 1919-20
    A Forgotten Minority: The Return of the Auslandsdeutsche to Germany in 1919-20 MATTHEW STIBBE Sheffield Hallam University This article examines the expulsion of Germans abroad (Auslandsdeutsche) from Allied countries and colonial empires in the aftermath of the First World War, and their somewhat negative reception in Weimar Germany in 1919-20. It does so against the background of what it identifies as a re-territorialisation of German national identity, beginning during the war itself and leading to an abrupt reversal of previous trends towards the inclusion of Germans abroad within broader transnational notions of Germanness (Deutschtum), rights to citizenship and aspirations to world power status. Re-territorialisation was not born out of the logic of de-territorialisation and Weltpolitik in any dialectical sense, however. Rather, its causes were largely circumstantial: the outbreak of global war in 1914, the worldwide economic and naval blockade of Imperial Germany, and its final defeat in 1918. Nonetheless, its implications were substantial, particularly for the way in which minority German groups living beyond Germany’s new borders were constructed in official and non-official discourses in the period after 1919-20. Keywords: Auslandsdeutsche, citizenship, de-territorialisation, Germans abroad, re-territorialisation Studies on National Movements 5 (2020) | Articles Introduction ‘Coming home’ was a common experience for combatants and civilians from all belligerent nations at the end of the First World War. It was also a process
    [Show full text]
  • At Berne: Kurt Eisner, the Opposition and the Reconstruction of the International
    ROBERT F. WHEELER THE FAILURE OF "TRUTH AND CLARITY" AT BERNE: KURT EISNER, THE OPPOSITION AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL To better understand why Marxist Internationalism took on the forms that it did during the revolutionary epoch that followed World War I, it is useful to reconsider the "International Labor and Socialist Con- ference" that met at Berne from January 26 to February 10,1919. This gathering not only set its mark on the "reconstruction" of the Second International, it also influenced both the formation and the development of the Communist International. It is difficult, however, to comprehend fully what transpired at Berne unless the crucial role taken in the deliberations by Kurt Eisner, on the one hand, and the Zimmerwaldian Opposition, on the other, is recognized. To a much greater extent than has generally been realized, the immediate success and the ultimate failure of the Conference depended on the Bavarian Minister President and the loosely structured opposition group to his Left. Nevertheless every scholarly study of the Conference to date, including Arno Mayer's excellent treatment of the "Stillborn Berne Conference", tends to un- derestimate Eisner's impact while largely ignoring the very existence of the Zimmerwaldian Opposition.1 Yet, if these two elements are neglected it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fathom the real significance of Berne. Consequently there is a need to reevaluate 1 In Mayer's case this would seem to be related to two factors: first, the context in which he examines Berne, namely the attempt by Allied labor leaders to influence the Paris Peace Conference; and second, his reliance on English and French accounts of the Conference.
    [Show full text]
  • MICROCOSM: Portrait of a European City Major Disturbance
    In Breslau, the overthrow of the imperial authorities passed off without MICROCOSM: Portrait of a European City major disturbance. On 8 November, a Loyal Appeal for the citizens to uphold by Norman Davies (pp. 326-379) their duties to the Kaiser was distributed in the names of the Lord Mayor, Paul Matting, Archbishop Bertram and others. But it had no great effect. The Commander of the VI Army Corps, General Pfeil, was in no mood for a fight. Breslau before and during the Second World War He released the political prisoners, ordered his men to leave their barracks, 1918-45 and, in the last order of the military administration, gave permission to the Social Democrats to hold a rally in the Jahrhunderthalle. The next afternoon, a The politics of interwar Germany passed through three distinct phases. In group of dissident airmen arrived from their base at Brieg (Brzeg). Their arrival 1918-20, anarchy spread far and wide in the wake of the collapse of the spurred the formation of 'soldiers' councils' (that is, Soviets) in several military German Empire. Between 1919 and 1933, the Weimar Republic re-established units and of a 100-strong Committee of Public Safety by the municipal leaders. stability, then lost it. And from 1933 onwards, Hitler's 'Third Reich' took an The Army Commander was greatly relieved to resign his powers. ever firmer hold. Events in Breslau, as in all German cities, reflected each of The Volksrat, or 'People's Council', was formed on 9 November 1918, from the phases in turn. Social Democrats, union leaders, Liberals and the Catholic Centre Party.
    [Show full text]
  • ABSTRACT Title of Document: the FURTHEST
    ABSTRACT Title of Document: THE FURTHEST WATCH OF THE REICH: NATIONAL SOCIALISM, ETHNIC GERMANS, AND THE OCCUPATION OF THE SERBIAN BANAT, 1941-1944 Mirna Zakic, Ph.D., 2011 Directed by: Professor Jeffrey Herf, Department of History This dissertation examines the Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) of the Serbian Banat (northeastern Serbia) during World War II, with a focus on their collaboration with the invading Germans from the Third Reich, and their participation in the occupation of their home region. It focuses on the occupation period (April 1941-October 1944) so as to illuminate three major themes: the mutual perceptions held by ethnic and Reich Germans and how these shaped policy; the motivation behind ethnic German collaboration; and the events which drew ethnic Germans ever deeper into complicity with the Third Reich. The Banat ethnic Germans profited from a fortuitous meeting of diplomatic, military, ideological and economic reasons, which prompted the Third Reich to occupy their home region in April 1941. They played a leading role in the administration and policing of the Serbian Banat until October 1944, when the Red Army invaded the Banat. The ethnic Germans collaborated with the Nazi regime in many ways: they accepted its worldview as their own, supplied it with food, administrative services and eventually soldiers. They acted as enforcers and executors of its policies, which benefited them as perceived racial and ideological kin to Reich Germans. These policies did so at the expense of the multiethnic Banat‟s other residents, especially Jews and Serbs. In this, the Third Reich replicated general policy guidelines already implemented inside Germany and elsewhere in German-occupied Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • Cr^Ltxj
    THE NAZI BLOOD PURGE OF 1934 APPRCWBD": \r H M^jor Professor 7 lOLi Minor Professor •n p-Kairman of the DeparCTieflat. of History / cr^LtxJ~<2^ Dean oiTKe Graduate School IV Burkholder, Vaughn, The Nazi Blood Purge of 1934. Master of Arts, History, August, 1972, 147 pp., appendix, bibliography, 160 titles. This thesis deals with the problem of determining the reasons behind the purge conducted by various high officials in the Nazi regime on June 30-July 2, 1934. Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goring, SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and others used the purge to eliminate a sizable and influential segment of the SA leadership, under the pretext that this group was planning a coup against the Hitler regime. Also eliminated during the purge were sundry political opponents and personal rivals. Therefore, to explain Hitler's actions, one must determine whether or not there was a planned putsch against him at that time. Although party and official government documents relating to the purge were ordered destroyed by Hermann GcTring, certain materials in this category were used. Especially helpful were the Nuremberg trial records; Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939; Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945; and Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1934. Also, first-hand accounts, contem- porary reports and essays, and analytical reports of a /1J-14 secondary nature were used in researching this topic. Many memoirs, written by people in a position to observe these events, were used as well as the reports of the American, British, and French ambassadors in the German capital.
    [Show full text]