Nazis

Should Medicine Discontinue Using Terminology Associated with Nazi Doctors?

Hans Asperger had been identified as an Oskar Schindler figure in the German medical community, with the diagnosis that bears his name helping to save many people from death under Nazi eugenic policies. But he also helped determine who would fall into the unfavored categories. Historian Edith Sheffer says it's time to retire his name.

My Father Gave Eichmann the Close-Up He Wanted

The author's father directed the live telecast of Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, using a cinematographical approach to raise the harrowing question of how a bureaucratic mediocrity could have engineered a genocide. The Israeli government's growing concern with the victims eclipsed this curiosity about the perpetrators. 

Why are Harvard, Stanford and NASA Honoring Nazis?

Major American institutions are loath to acknowledge that they enabled the rehabilitation of Nazi scientists and industrialists to benefit from their knowledge or wealth. 

New York Museums to Disclose Provenance of Pieces Looted by Nazis

The Metropolitan Museum has currently identified 53 works as seized or sold under duress by Nazis. It is unclear how many more it will identify in response to a new state law requiring the display of those pieces to disclose the conditions of acquisition. 

Ghosts in the Mirror: France's Crusade Against Former Nazis in the Algerian Insurgency

by Danny Orbach

Nazi fugitives and mercenaries took on an outsize significance in the strategic imaginations of both French and West German governments and intelligence agencies in the Cold War; they were most influential not through their actions but through distorting government policy through these delusions of power.

Are Historians Too Credulous of the Single Culprit Explanation of the Reichstag Fire?

by Benjamin Carter Hett

Did Marinus van der Lubbe act alone in setting the Reichstag Fire? Historians who accept that theory – including giants in the field like Richard J. Evans – should recognize conflicts of interest in the sources supporting it and dig in to newly available archives to make sure. 

80 Years Ago, Hitler's Declaration of War Against the United States Sealed the Fate of Europe's Jews

by Brendan Simms

While German forces exterminated Jews on the Eastern Front as enemy combatants, Hitler held the Jews of central and western europe as hostages against American entry into global war. After December 12, 1941 the political restraints on the Final Solution ended. 

Should Germany Prosecute the Few Surviving Nazis?

by David Motadel

"Most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust have passed away, but German courts still have an opportunity to prosecute those who remain alive. It is the final chapter in the country’s long and not very successful history of ensuring justice for their victims."

Right-Wing Ideologues Turn Aggressors Into Victims

by Waitman Wade Beorn

"Allowing the right to weave pernicious counternarratives and to create saints from sinners will only embolden future Ashli Babbitts and spawn more violence. "

Researchers Work on Mystery Uranium Cubes to Better Understand Nazi Progress on Atomic Bomb

New forensic research techniques could fill in missing details of the progress of Nazi nuclear weapons programs and improve contemporary efforts to enforce nuclear nonproliferation. 

A Hitler-Style Seizure of Power Was Never in Trump's Reach

by Waitman Wade Beorn

A historian of the German military under Nazism argues that Trump lacked the ability to recruit the military to his side the way that Hitler did, and the US faces greater danger from extremist paramilitaries or civil attempts to subvert democracy than from a military coup.

Ambitious for War: How German-Soviet Collaboration Set the Course for WWII

by Ian Ona Johnson

After the Treaty of Versailles and the Bolshevik Revolution, Germany and the Soviet Union forged a partnership of pariah governments to industrialize and arm their nations, and making inevitable the slaughter that unfolded in the eastern front of the second world war.

How a Historian Got Close, Maybe Too Close, to a Nazi Thief

Historian Jonathan Petropoulous forged a relationship with Bruno Lohse, the art agent of Hermann Göring. That relationship proved ethically dubious when the professor did paid contract work for heirs of a German Jewish family to trace a stolen painting and the trail led to a foundation owned by Lohse.

Hitler’s Pet Alligator to be Stuffed, Put on Display in Russia

The 84 year-old reptile will be stuffed and displayed in Moscow after traveling from Mississippi to Berlin and being gifted to Russia by British troops after the capture of Berlin in 1945. 

Thieves Grab Nazi Memorabilia in Museum Heists, Puzzling Police

Since March, four museums in the Netherlands and Denmark have been broken into, and memorabilia, including Nazi uniforms, has been stolen. 

Conventional Culture in the Third Reich

by Moritz Föllmer

Although Nazi aesthetics are generally associated with the monumental architecture of Albert Speer and the propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl, Germans generally encountered conventionality in art, music and cinema. This helped to normalize the acts of the Third Reich and to allow ordinary Germans to dissociate themselves from Nazism after 1945.

In Germany, Confronting Shameful Legacy Is Essential Part of Police Training

In the postwar era, Germany fundamentally redesigned law enforcement to prevent past atrocities from ever repeating. Its approach may hold lessons for police reform everywhere.

After World War II, Most ‘Ordinary Nazis’ Returned to Lives of Obscurity. The World Must Recover Their Stories Before It’s Too Late

by Daniel Lee

The act of recovering perpetrators’ voices sheds light on consent and conformity under the swastika, enabling us to ask new questions about responsibility, blame and manipulation.

How Crowdsourcing Aided a Push to Preserve the Histories of Nazi Victims

With people around the globe sheltering at home amid the pandemic, the Arolsen Archives asked for help indexing them. Thousands joined the effort.

The Search for the Truth About the Nazi Plot to Assassinate FDR

by Howard Blum

The events surrounding Operation Long Jump, as the Nazi assassination mission that targeted the Tehran Conference was known, remained a deeply buried official secret.