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Introduction In 2005, the Historical Association (HA) published a government-sponsored report, which attacked what it referred to as the ‘Hitlerisation’ of history. In its analysis the report made two related points: firstly that Nazi Germany was over-represented in the school curriculum for the post-14 age group, and secondly, that this over-representation made school students, at best, negative about, and at worst, positively hostile towards, modern Germans. The report’s positive reference to what The Spectator called ‘Our shameful Nazi fetish’, helped to
[ Dracula ] anticipates the mass destruction of both European Jews and sexual deviants at the hands of Nazi racial hygienists. The teutonic Dr. van Helsing’s surgical assault on the supine, immobile, and vulnerable form of Dracula, in a ritual murder outside conventional morality, without the
MUP FINAL PROOF – <STAGE>, 09/04/2013, SPi 5 Nazi spies and the ‘Auslandsorganisation’ Given MI5’s somewhat ambiguous attitude towards Nazism, it is pertinent to ask: at what point after 1933 did policy begin to change and when did Nazi Germany and its agents become a prime focus of counter-intelligence? An internal MI5 memorandum records a meeting taking place at the Home Office on 23 November 1933, at which it was decided: that MI5 should undertake to look after Fascism in the same way as they look after communism, and that the Commissioner of Police and the
196 9 Land wars, Nazis and the Troubles The national referendum on Irish entry to the EC took place on 10 May 1972. The result in favour of accession was an endorsement of modernisation and Europeanisation, and all that they entailed. The turnout of 71 per cent and the resounding 83 per cent in favour were interpreted by native modernising elites and external supporters as popular approval of government policies.1 A deeper analysis of the referendum campaign reveals an impassioned public debate about the implications of Irish adaptation to the European and
The destruction of a book can provoke an almost instinctive negative reaction. It is an act which has come to symbolise the suppression of knowledge and an intolerance of education or enlightenment. In fictional portrayals such as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Roald Dahl’s Matilda , destroying books is an authoritarian attack on freedom, as well as an indication of ignorance and philistinism. Similarly, reverence for books is seen as a sign of good character and open-mindedness. When Nazi Germany appears as a historical example in free speech debates
3 The British left and the rise of Nazism First impressions It can be difficult, with the benefit of hindsight, to imagine that people in Britain were ever unsure about what Nazism stood for.1 Yet it was the case that early impressions were developed without knowledge of what was to come, and it is with this in mind that their accuracy or otherwise should be judged today. It would be unfair, for example, to dismiss those who examined the Nazis’ antiSemitism but did not predict the Holocaust. To do this would be to attribute blindness or naiveté to virtually
1 The horror of the Nazi past in the reunification present: Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromantiks We are separated from yesterday not by a yawning abyss, but by the same situation. (Camus) Everyone bears the guilt for everything, but if everyone knew that, we would have paradise on earth. (Dostoyevsky) These two epigraphs, from the opening and closing titles of Yesterday Girl (1966), Alexander Kluge’s pioneering work of Young German Cinema, provide an entirely apposite introduction to the concerns of this book; for here I will explore two recent works of experimental
It has been widely asserted that nationhood is inseparable from narration. This vague claim may be clarified by understanding that nationalism is bound up with the universal prototypical narrative structures of heroic, romantic, and sacrificial tragi-comedy. This essay considers an historically important case of the emplotment of nationalism - the sacrificial organization of German nationalism between the two world wars. It examines one exemplary instance of this emplotment, F. W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922). However unintentionally, Nosferatu represents the vampire in a way that is cognitively continuous with Nazi representations of Jews. The films sacrificial emplotment of vampirism is, in turn, continuous with Nazi policies. That continuity places the film in a larger discourse that helped to make Nazi policies possible.
This volume traces changing images of Germany in the field of International Relations (IR). Images of countries are mental representations with audio-visual and narrative dimensions that identify typical or even unique characteristics. This book focuses on perceptions of Germany from the English-speaking world and on the role they played in the development of twentieth-century IR theory. When the discipline originated, liberal internationalists contrasted cooperative foreign policies with inherently aggressive Prussianism. Early realists developed their ideas with reference to the German fight against the Treaty of Versailles. Geopoliticians and German emigre scholars relied on German history when they translated historical experiences into social-scientific vocabularies. The book demonstrates that few states have seen their image change as drastically as Germany during the century. After the Second World War, liberals, lawyers, and constructivists developed new theories and concepts in view of the Nuremberg trials, the transformation of the former enemy into an ally of the West, and Germany’s new commitment to multilateralism. Today, IR theorists discuss the perplexing nature of ‘civilian power’ Germany – an economic giant but a military dwarf. Yet the chapters in this volume also show that there has never been just one image of Germany, but always several standing next to each other in a sometimes compatible and sometimes contradictory manner.