20094241 Newsletter.Pub
Volume 13, Number 2 Page The Bulletin www.uvm.edu/~uvmchs Volume 13, Number 2 Spring 2009 The Fifth Miller Symposium: “The Law in Nazi Germany” by Michelle Magin On 19 April 2009, the University of Vermont hosted responses grew increasingly radical. Previously dis- the Fifth Miller Symposium, focusing on “The Law in missed explanations, which blamed the growing inde- Nazi Germany.” The speakers included Konrad H. pendence of women, the “world Jewish conspiracy,” Jarausch of the University of North Carolina at Chapel and the influx of foreigners, became more widely ac- Hill, Douglas G. Morris of the Federal Defenders of cepted. With the Weimar government offering no viable New York, Harry Reicher of the University of Pennsyl- remedies to this situation, many academics and profes- vania Law School, Raphael Gross of the Jüdisches Mu- sionals sought more radical alternatives. seum in Frankfurt and the Leo Baeck Institute of Lon- The popularity of the Nazis grew among students, don, and Kenneth F. Ledford of Case Western Reserve after the 1933 electoral breakthrough. Although Nazi University. Robert Rachlin of Downs, Rachlin, Martin purges had excluded Social Democrats, political dissent- and the Vermont Law School moderated the proceed- ers and Jews from numerous professions, these actions ings. The main themes addressed in their papers were only impacted a narrow base of individuals. Many stu- the active and passive acceptance of anti-Semitism by dents and professionals embraced Nazi rhetoric, and lawyers in the Third Reich; the persecution of Jewish this acceptance facilitated a dramatic push to the right. lawyers by the Nazis; post-war trials of Nazi judges, Gradually, mainstream society began to view Nazism as prosecutors, and civil servants; the role of morality in a quasi-respectable ideology.
[Show full text]