German history

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• SOURCE: Codastory
  3/30/2022
  

  Germany's Racial Reckoning Offers Warnings for US

  "Seen from an American perspective, Germany is often portrayed as the wise and capable professor of remembrance; the U.S its difficult student."

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  2/23/2022
  

  The Beginnings of Queer Citizenship in West Germany

  by Samuel Clowes Huneke

  An emerging gay activist culture in West Berlin in the 1970s made substantial gains in building cultural spaces and expanding tolerance, but struggled to build political solidarity out of sexual identity amid other social divisions.

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• SOURCE: Forward
  2/12/2022
  

  Was Forgetting the Holocaust a Pillar of West German Rebuilding?

  Harald Jähner's book contents that the West German public's view of the nation's recent past grew darker as the years passed, but in the immediate aftermath of the war, a mood of adventurousness and liberation was widespread – at the cost of avoiding discussions of atrocity.

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  1/27/2022
  

  Remember, too, the Victims Nazis Singled Out for their Politics

  by Adam J. Sacks

  A German organization dedicated to the remembrance of left-wing victims of the Nazis has had its charitable status revoked. While the history of Nazism's persecution and murder of Jews and other groups is rightly commemorated, Nazism's violence against the political left has been obscured. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  12/1/2021
  

  Review: How the Germans Coped With Defeat

  by Richard J. Evans

  Monica Black's new book argues that irrationality and mysticism filled the cultural void created by defeat and the discrediting of Nazism in postwar Germany; Richard Evans says it doesn't quite prove its case, but offers insight into the present spread of nonsense on social media.

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  11/17/2021
  

  Helen Roche's Work Examines the Elite Schools Nazis Modeled on Eton

  Helen Roche has published the first comprehensive history of the Napolas, the schools Nazis established to train future leaders of the Reich, and notes deep patterns of exchange between teachers and students at British and German schools before the start of war. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  11/10/2021
  

  Framing Political Violence as Patriotism is Even More Dangerous Than it Sounds

  by Jeremy Best

  The Republican Party has agreed to label the Capitol rioters of January 6 as patriots resisting a dubious (if not stolen) election result. This is a step toward endorsing more political violence and endangering democratic government.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/6/2021
  

  Germany to Dedicate Additional $767M for Holocaust Survivors

  Russian Jews who were subjected to the brutal siege of Leningrad, and subjected to Nazi propaganda that encouraged other Russians to blame them for the city's suffering, are among those offered new pensions. 

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• SOURCE: Cabinet
  9/9/2021
  

  Melcher's Ghosts

  by Monica Black

  "Denazification prompted less soul-searching than resentment and anxiety among the German population. People worried that their prior affiliations and involvement in everything from war crimes to far less nefarious acts—like having obtained property illegally during the Nazi years—would be revealed."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/3/2021
  

  New Book of Family History Recreates the Anti-Nazi Resistance in Germany

  Rebecca Donner, great-great-neice of Mildred Harnack, an American-born woman executed in 1943 for anti-Nazi activity in Germany, has written a book of family history that also shows the melting away of German delusions about Hitler's intentions and power. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  7/14/2021
  

  Jenny Erpenbeck Is Keeping Time

  German author Jenny Erpenbeck's work is an exercise in preserving the objects that place a person's memory in history, particularly her own childhood in East Germany. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/8/2021
  

  Germany Apologized for a Genocide. It’s Nowhere Near Enough

  by Kavena Hambira and Miriam Gleckman-Krut

  "To begin to atone for its Namibian genocide, Germany must negotiate directly with descendants of survivors — and commit to wide-ranging reparations."

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• 7/11/2021
  

  Reflecting on the 80th Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of Russia

  by Rick Halperin

  The Nazi invasion of Russia unleashed unprecedented brutality against civilians along the eastern front; those horrors should reinforce a commitment to human rights.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/28/2021
  

  Germany Acknowledges Colonial Genocide in Namibia and Promises Development Projects

  "We will from now on officially call these events what they are from a contemporary perspective: a genocide.”

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• SOURCE: BBC
  5/31/2021
  

  Why Germany's Namibia Genocide Apology Isn't Enough

  The BBC editorializes that the German government's apologies for its genocidal repression in southwest Africa is more public relations than reparation. 

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• SOURCE: WRAL
  5/17/2021
  

  Germany Nears Accord with Namibia on Colonial Killings

  Germany has hinted at its readiness to make compensation payments to Namibia in reparation for the genocidal attacks on the Herero and other peoples in 1904, considered one of the first modern genocides. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  5/17/2021
  

  Black Germans and New Forms of Resistance

  by Tiffany Florvil

  Black activists and intellectuals in Germany have worked to promote knowledge of colonial and Black history as a counter to the entrenched tendency to hide and evade the subject. 

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• SOURCE: HistoryExtra
  5/11/2021
  

  The Night of the Long Knives: The Bloody Purge that Secured Hitler’s Power

  Hitler's 1934 purge of his perceived rival Ernst Röhm and his followers suspected of disloyalty foreshadowed the eliminationist violence of his regime. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/2/2021
  

  Germany’s Anti-Vaccination History Is Riddled With Anti-Semitism

  by Edna Bonhomme

  Antisemitism has often flared during public health crises such as pandemics; it has also attached itself to suspicion of vaccination, a trend that has been disturbingly prominent among German anti-vaxxers. 

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• 4/25/2021
  

  Whither Germany? Historiography and Public Reckoning with the National Past

  by Samuel Miner

  Hedwig Richter's book "Democracy: A German Affair" has sparked controversy for its rejection of the idea that Germany has followed a "special path" to liberal democracy and catalyzed a broad debate about the role of historians in public reckoning with the crimes of the past.