scholarly journals Normalizing Evil: The National Socialist Physicians Leagues

Conatus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Sheena M Eagan
Keyword(s):  
Medical Ethics ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Racial Minority ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Professional Organization ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Medical Organization ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Physician Participation ◽  
The Holocaust

The National Socialist Physicians League (or NSDÄB), was a professional medical organization founded upon the same ideologies that shaped the broader National Socialist agenda. Despite the vast historical and ethical literature focused on physician involvement in Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust, little attention has been paid to the NSDÄB. However, the establishment of this group is important to understanding the forces shaping physician participation in the Nazi party. Physicians often look to professional medical organizations as a source of moral guidance; thus, ideologies of racism and the active harassment of ethnic or racial minority groups by this professional organization may have contributed to the establishment of this behavior as not only permissive but normal. This article will explore how this organization contributed to normalizing, desensitizing and legitimizing behavior that could not be justified by any normative theory of professional medical ethics.

Professional Services, IBM, and the Holocaust

2003 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse F. Dillard
Keyword(s):  
Social Systems ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Professional Services ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Administrative Structures

IBM and the Holocaust both represent power, ideology, and rational administration. We view one as logical and commendable, the other as pathological and deplorable, and both as a manifestation of instrumental rationality. IBM and the Holocaust (Black 2001) explores the connect between IBM and its dynamic leader, Thomas J. Watson, and the program of genocide carried out against European Jewry over the 12-year reign of Germany's Third Reich. Those who controlled, applied, and supported IBM's information processing technology are implicated in operationalizing the lethal ideology of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party. Considering relationships between the fascist and the capitalist extremes provides a starting point in a dialogue that challenges the privileged position of instrumental rationality in evaluating choices related to the development, implementation, and application of information technology. The investigation of IBM and the Holocaust illustrates the potential for technology to reinforce, and be reinforced by, a prevailing ideology through the tangible manifestations of instrumental rationality: machines, professionals, and administrative structures. The ends to which the technology and its manifestations are applied by those implementing and supporting it become lost in striving to efficiently accomplish the immediate, intermediate tasks. The technological manifestations and their complicity in the Holocaust illustrate the inability of instrumental rationality to adequately incorporate the requisite ethical and moral dimensions, a lacuna no less present, though not so obvious, in actions undertaken within the current economic and political spheres by those employing the same tangible manifestations of instrumental rationality. The inability of those most directly implicated to reflexively consider the alliance of technology and ideology assures the continuing propensity of both good and evil. Unfortunately, the social systems that spawned the impressive technological developments do not provide adequate means for discerning and ethically evaluating the destructive and the creative potential.

National Socialism and Fascism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irving Hexham
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Italian Fascism ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Press ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
National Socialists ◽  
The 1950S

To appreciate that the various forms of fascism, particularly German National Socialism under Adolf Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist German Workers' Party commonly known as the Nazi Party; 1920–1945) and Italian Fascism under Benito Mussolini’s Partito Nazionale Fascista (PNF, National Fascist Party; 1922–1943), are embedded within modernism, one must first recognize that the reality and horror of the Holocaust has distorted our understanding of Nazism in three significant ways. First, until at least the early 1990s the crude anti-Semitism of National Socialists like Julius Streicher (1885–1946) and Johann van Leers (1902–1965) prevented scholars from taking seriously the notion that National Socialism is an ideology that intellectuals helped define. Secondly, because anti-Semitism did not obviously manifest itself among Italian modernists and fascists, it discouraged comparison. Thirdly, starting in the 1950s many surviving National Socialists, who were formerly passionate SS-intellectuals like Sigrid Hunke (1913–1999) (Poewe 2011) or like the head of the Press Division of Ribbentrop’s Foreign Office Paul Karl Schmidt (1911–1997) (Plöger 2009), among many others, reinvented themselves.

scholarly journals Whose Memory is it Anyway? An Exploration of Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Physically Handicapped ◽  
Holocaust Narratives

During the Holocaust, Hitler and his Nazi Party were responsible for the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews, as well as the callous slaughter of additional minority groups such as Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, the physically handicapped, mentally ill and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nevertheless, in Western consciousness, the Holocaust has essentially become synonymous with Jewish history and destruction. As a result, the non-Jewish victim experience has been effectively diminished in popular culture. This MRP draws on literature in cultural memory studies and survivor testimonies available on YouTube to analyze the power struggle between non-Jewish minority groups that were persecuted in the Holocaust and their Jewish counterparts to understand why the former appears excluded from mainstream Holocaust narratives. The goal: to emphasize that the Holocaust was not merely a Jewish tragedy, but a profound calamity for humankind.

scholarly journals Whose Memory is it Anyway? An Exploration of Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Physically Handicapped ◽  
Holocaust Narratives

During the Holocaust, Hitler and his Nazi Party were responsible for the systematic annihilation of millions of Jews, as well as the callous slaughter of additional minority groups such as Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, the physically handicapped, mentally ill and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nevertheless, in Western consciousness, the Holocaust has essentially become synonymous with Jewish history and destruction. As a result, the non-Jewish victim experience has been effectively diminished in popular culture. This MRP draws on literature in cultural memory studies and survivor testimonies available on YouTube to analyze the power struggle between non-Jewish minority groups that were persecuted in the Holocaust and their Jewish counterparts to understand why the former appears excluded from mainstream Holocaust narratives. The goal: to emphasize that the Holocaust was not merely a Jewish tragedy, but a profound calamity for humankind.

Hitler, for Example: Registers of National Socialist Exemplarity in Contemporary Germany

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract This article examines whether and how the figure of Adolf Hitler in particular, and National Socialism more generally, operate as moral exemplars in today’s Germany. In conversation with similar studies about Mosely in England, Franco in Spain, and Mussolini in Italy, it seeks to advance our comparative understanding of neofascism in Europe and beyond. In Germany, legal and discursive constraints limit what can be said about the Third Reich period, while even far-right nationalists often condemn Hitler, for either the Holocaust or his military failure. Here I revise the concept of moral exemplarity as elaborated by Caroline Humphry to argue that Hitler and National Socialism do nevertheless work as contemporary exemplars, in at least three fashions: negativity, substitution, and extension. First, they stand as the most extreme markers of negative exemplarity for broad publics that understand them as illustrations of absolute moral depravity. Second, while Hitler himself is widely unpopular, Führer-substitutes such as Rudolf Hess provide alternative figures that German nationalists admire and seek to emulate. Finally, by extension to the realm of the ordinary, National Socialism introduces a cast of exemplars in the figures of loving grandfathers or anonymous fallen soldiers. The moral values for which they stand, I show, appear to be particularly significant for young nationalists. An extended, more open-ended notion of exemplarity, I conclude, can offer important insights about the lingering afterlife of fascist figures in the moral life of European nationalists today.

Practice with Culturally Diverse Families of Young Children with Disabilities

1994 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen A. Rounds ◽  
Marie Weil ◽  
Kathleen Kirk Bishop
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Racial Minority ◽  
Diverse Population ◽  
Culturally Competent ◽  
Infants And Toddlers ◽  
Young Children With Disabilities ◽  
Culturally Diverse Families ◽  
Family Centered

Young children from racial minority groups are at higher risk for disabilities and developmental delay as a result of conditions associated with poverty. The authors discuss principles that guide culturally competent practice with families of infants and toddlers with disabilities and ways in which family-centered practice approaches incorporate these guidelines. Practitioner strategies for developing cultural competence in order to work responsively with this diverse population are presented.

scholarly journals The relationship between obesity and psychiatric disorders across ethnic and racial minority groups in the United States

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myra Rosen-Reynoso ◽  
Margarita Alegría ◽  
Chih-nan Chen ◽  
Mara Laderman ◽  
Robert Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Minority ◽  
The Relationship

scholarly journals Structural Solidarity: Lay Theories of Discrimination and Coalitional Attitudes among Stigmatized Groups

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen A. Craig ◽  
Julian Rucker ◽  
Riana M. Brown
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Racial Minority ◽  
Lay Theories ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Control Information ◽  
Stigmatized Groups ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
And Behavior

How do people’s beliefs about what drives discrimination against their group (structural factors or interpersonal biases) affect their support for coalescing with and improving stigmatized outgroups’ positions? Analyses of nationally-representative datasets reveal that Hispanics, Black Americans, and White women who held more structural (vs. interpersonal) understandings of ingroup discrimination (racism, sexism) were more likely to express support and attend to issues affecting other stigmatized groups (Study 1). Among White women and non-Black LGBTQ individuals, beliefs that structural factors drive the ingroup’s discrimination predicted support for intra-minority coalitions and intentions and behavior supporting Black Americans (Study 2). Finally, several experiments (Studies 3-4) revealed that White women for whom structural forms of sexism (vs. interpersonally-driven sexism or control information) were made salient expressed more support for coalescing with and acting to support racial minority groups. Overall, considering structural factors contributing to discrimination against one’s own group’s facilitates seeking and supporting intra-minority coalitions.

Fritz: Nazi Propagandist

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Socialist Movement

This chapter showcases a Dutch collaborator named Fritz. Fritz shared many of Tony's prewar conservative opinions in favor of the monarchy and traditional Dutch values, although he was of working-class origins, unlike Tony and Beatrix, who were Dutch bourgeoisie. But unlike Beatrix or Tony, Fritz joined the Nazi Party, wrote propaganda for the Nazi cause, and married the daughter of a German Nazi. When he was interviewed in 1992, Fritz indicated he was appalled at what he later learned about Nazi treatment of Jews but that he still believed in many of the goals of the National Socialist movement and felt that Hitler had betrayed the movement. Fritz is thus classified as a disillusioned Nazi supporter who retains his faith in much of National Socialism, and this chapter is presented as illustrative of the psychology of those who once supported the Nazi regime but who were disillusioned after the war.

scholarly journals Fictional Crimes/Historical Crimes: Genre and Character in Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir Trilogy

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Laura Major
Keyword(s):  
Popular Fiction ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Good Story ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Detective Stories

This paper will explore Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy, composed of March Violets (1989), The Pale Criminal (1990), and A German Requiem (1991), discussing the overlap and blurring of generic boundaries in these novels and the ability of this form to reckon with the Holocaust. These detective stories are not directly about the Holocaust, and although the crimes investigated by the mordant Bernie Gunther are fictional, they are interweaved with the greater crimes committed daily by the Nazi Party. The novels are brutally realistic, violent, bleak, and harsh, in a narrative style highly appropriate for crime novels set in Nazi Germany. Indeed, with our knowledge of the enormity of the Nazi crimes, the violence in the novels seems not gratuitous but reflective of the era. Bernie Gunther himself, who is both hard-boiled protagonist and narrator, is a deeply flawed human, even an anti-hero, but in Berlin, which is “alive” as a character in these novels, his insights, cloaked in irony and sarcasm, highlight the struggle to resist, even passively, even just inside one’s own mind, the current of Nazism. Although many representations of the Holocaust in popular fiction strive towards the “feel good” story within the story, Kerr’s morally and generically ambiguous novels never give in to this urge, and the solution of the crime is never redemptive. The darkness of these novels, paired with the popularity of crime fiction, make for a significant vehicle for representing the milieu in which the Holocaust was able to occur.

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