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This thesis analyses the radicalisation of the bürgertum in a single Bavarian town, Hof-an-der-Saale, in the five years after the First World War. It is bookended by two important and enormously different elections. In the first of these – the January 1919 elections to the National Assembly – the bürgerliche districts of Hof voted almost entirely for the German Democratic Party, a left-liberal, pro-Republican party that called for a parliamentary democracy, the separation of church and state, rights for women, a renunciation of German militarism and a close collaboration with the Social Democrats. But just five years later, in the Reichstag elections of May 1924, these very same districts cast their votes for the Völkisch Block, a cover organisation for the then-banned Nazi Party. Within half a decade, then, Hof's bürgerliche milieu had switched its allegiance from a party of left-liberal democrats to the most radical nationalists in German history. Why did this dramatic and disturbing electoral turnaround occur? In an effort to answer this question, this thesis offers a detailed study of the narratives and discourses that circulated within Hof's bürgerliche milieu during this five-year period. It uses newspaper editorials, the minutes of political meetings, electoral propaganda, the documents of civic associations and commercial organisations, the Protestant newsletter and a range of other sources in an effort to reconstruct what Hof's Burghers thought, said and wrote between these two elections. What happened between January 1919 and May 1924 to transform Hof's bürgerliche inhabitants from Democrat into Nazi voters, and how did this startling change manifest itself at the level of discourse and political culture?

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This dissertation is a comparison of local church conditions in three German Protestant church districts during the National Socialist era: the Nauen district in the Brandenburg Church Province of the Old Prussian Union Church, the Pima district in the Saxon Evangelical Lutheran Land Church and the Ravensburg district in the Wurttemberg Evangelical Land Church. It focuses on the attitudes and roles of the pastors, curates and vicars who served in the primarily rural parishes of these districts, analyzes the effect of the 'national renewal' that accompanied the National Socialist seizure of power upon the church conditions in their parishes, and probes their own attitudes toward the prevalent religious nationalism of the day. Following a comparison of the controversies surrounding pastoral appointments in Nauen, Pima and Ravensburg, the study examines the nature and intensity of church-political conflict in each of the districts during the National Socialist era. Finally, the study closes with a consideration of clerical attitudes toward the National Socialist euthanasia programme and the antisemitism that led to the Holocaust. Drawing on official church correspondence at three levels (parish, district and land church), parish newsletters, accounts of meetings throughout the period, the study concludes that while these Protestant clergymen generally shared a common conservative nationalist outlook, the manifestation of the church struggle in their parishes took diverse forms. Parishioners in Nauen and especially Pima (but not Ravensburg) displayed a high level of interest in their churches in 1933, in part an effect of the strength of the national renewal in their regions. In Nauen, the church struggle was channelled into the quest for control of pastoral appointments. In Pima, the church struggle mirrored the course of events in Saxony as a whole, and included extreme 'German Christians,' radical members of the Confessing Church and a moderate movement for church

This study deals with the reconstruction of the administration of justice in Hesse during the Allied military occupation of Germany. (1945-1949). The argument is analysed through two main elements: the restoration of judicial institutions and the denazification of judicial personnel. It is argued that the significance of the institutional element took precedence over the personnel element, since the denazification programme in the U.S. occupation zone was abandoned when it proved impractical. The evidence presented in this work is based on archival research, government documents, eyewitness accounts, and secondary sources.

The maintenance of German colonial rule in East Africa depended on a strong military presence. The Kaiserliche Schutztruppe fur Deutsch Ostafrika was established to meet this need, but financial and political constraints dictated that this force be manned by an African rank and file. Initially, most of the African recruits came from outside of the colony, but, as time passed, the Germans began recruiting from a few specific ethnic groups in the colony. / The relationship between the African soldiers and their German employers yielded military successes for the new colonial government and, by extension, an enhanced status for the soldiers themselves. Over time, the Africans within the Schutztruppe distanced themselves from other Africans in the colony and began to develop separate communities at the government stations, which in turn fostered the growth of an askari group identity. The interests of these communities became inextricably linked to the German presence in the region. The development of this relationship helps to explain the askaris' support of the German campaign against the British during the First World War.

The rationale for this study is Albert Speer's unique value as a source of information concerning the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler. Although there is a wealth of information available on Nazi Germany and Hitler, the observations of this intelligent man who was an important official of the regime and a close associate of Hitler himself carry weight that no other report can match. He was a well-educated, intellectual, and articulate man who left behind three comprehensive books and many articles and interviews. In addition to such publications, there are, in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., many records of interviews with Speer conducted by Allied personnel immediately following the war. Those documents have been used extensively in this study.There is no attempt either to indict or to vindicate Speer, as many authors have done, but rather the purpose is to present in narrative form an analytical study of the relationship between the two men. The central focus throughout examines Speer and Hitler in juxtaposition and forms conclusions on the nature of their complex and compelling attachment. In the process, historical events form the backdrop as Speer describes them for us. It is always Speer, not Hitler, with whom the primary interest lies.The question of how anyone of Speer's background and intelligence could have given his life to a regime devoted to gutter politics, conquest of a continent, and genocide always arises in any study of Speer. The strange hold the Nazis exert on the world's imagination seems to ebb and flow, but does not die out, nor does the awful suspicion that something similar could happen again. Speer used his writings to describe the process and warn against its resurrection, especially in light of the tremendous leap in technology we have seen. Do not look for monsters, he counseled, for monsters are easily identified and avoided. Beware the manipulators who orchestrate on a national scale those policies which bring harm to whole populations, men who loudly proclaim their humanness and ordinariness.This inquiry is not an attempt to prove a predetermined hypothesis, since it embodies a historical approach rather than an experimental one. Information is drawn from the books and papers of Speer, as well as official documents, but secondary works to corroborate the basic sources are cited at times. There is still no definitive biography of Speer, although he appears as a central figure in many works. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that the Speer family has put his personal papers in Heidelberg beyond the reach of anyone until 1999, probably as a result of his negative treatment in various publications.The technical papers from the Ministry of Armaments and War Production are housed in the Bundesarchiv at Koblenz, but were not pertinent to this study. The Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich houses official papers, as does the Berlin Document Center, while the Washington has the transcripts of Library of Congress in Hitler's Table Talks, some parts of which are used in this study. Speer's books and published material give an extensive look at his part in the Third Reich, his relationship with Hitler, and his own feelings and observations concerning both. The International Military Tribunal records from Nuremberg are both extensive and enlightening. One may also view the collection of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's personal photographer, in the Special Collections section at Bracken Library.Chapter I deals with Speer in the pre-war years as he rose to fame and became part of Hitler's inner circle, while Chapter II views the war years through Speer's experiences. In Chapter III the early relationship between Speer and Hitler is developed, and in Chapter IV the war, the collapse of the Third Reich, and the attendant disasters are covered.

The generic term national cinema implies that, viewed in their totality, the films of a country promote notions of collective and cultural identity. Most studies of post-war German cinema, however, focus exclusively on the former Federal Republic of Germany and concentrate on issues of authorship and the influence of literature on film rather than examining East and West German films in relation to the antagonistically opposed social systems in which they were produced. Thus, under the title The split screen: Cinema and national identity in a divided Germany (1979-89), a comparative analysis is undertaken of the political, economic and ideological determinants shaping East and West German feature films during the so-called established phase of the two states between 1979 and 1989. The overall framework of the study is a discussion of German film culture within the climate of post-war ideological conflict, covering three main objectives. The first part of the thesis provides a theoretical framework for comparing the two German film cultures on an abstract ideological level. The second part of the project analyses the extent to which, during the eighties, the political systems of the FRG and GDR shaped production, distribution and exhibition in order to establish a particular type of film culture. The breadth of reference thus provided is combined with greater analytic depth in the third part of the project, where the goal is to investigate in greater detail how political, economic and cultural debates surrounding the question of an East and West German identity were translated into filmic discourse. Based on such a relational perspective, the thesis comes to three major conclusions. First of all, there was a greater interaction or confrontation between the two German film cultures with regard to their dissemination of a distinct national identity than it has commonly been assumed. Secondly, there were recurring cycles of liberalism and orthodoxy in the film policies of the two states - which can be linked to varying degrees of internal stability and external confrontation. And thirdly, the 'officially approved' and promoted films constituted an artificially created high culture mainly produced for an international market and hardly ever finding wide-spread public support among the German audience. Thus, an all-German film culture between 1979 and 1989 can be perceived, metaphorically, as a 'split screen': an imaginary space which projects, through its polarised division, the search of the divided German nation for a specific national-historical identity during a period which later proved to be the concluding phase of the Cold War.

This thesis describes the early modern agricultural history of Germany and its relation to Nazi agricultural policies.