Le mouvement de construction de théâtres en plein air sous le Troisième Reich ou Thingbewegung est un aspect relativement méconnu de la politique culturelle national-socialiste. Ce théâtre de propagande devait réunir plusieurs milliers de spectateurs dans des lieux excentrés, des espaces construits spécialement par le régime afin de célébrer la communauté du peuple dégagée de toute différenciation sociale ou, pour reprendre la terminologie nazie, la Volksgemeinschaft. L’aspect central reste la volonté du régime de faire coïncider, à une échelle considérable, une nouvelle forme d’architecture et de spectacle théâtral de masse. L’objectif, exprimé clairement dès le début du mouvement en 1933, était l’élaboration de 400 scènes sur l’ensemble du territoire. Dès 1934, vingt étaient effectivement en construction et en 1939, au début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, elles étaient environ au nombre de trente. Ce projet de recherche part de l’hypothèse qu’une meilleure compréhension du phénomène devient possible lorsque ce dernier est restitué dans la tradition historique double du théâtre et de l’architecture. Cette démarche, à la fois synchronique et diachronique, fondée sur une approche pluridisciplinaire, vise à mettre au jour les formes spécifiques de création de ces lieux scéniques tout en soulignant l’appartenance à la politique idéologique totalitaire du national-socialisme. / The open-air theatre construction movement under the Third Reich or Thingbewegung is a relatively unknown aspect of National Socialist cultural policy. This propaganda theatre was to gather several thousand spectators in outlying places, spaces specially built by the regime to celebrate the community of the people free of any social differentiation or, to use Nazi terminology, the Volksgemeinschaft. The central aspect remains the regime’s desire to bring together, on a considerable scale, a new form of architecture and mass theatrical performance. The objective, clearly expressed from the beginning of the movement in 1933, was to develop 400 stages throughout the country. By 1934, twenty were actually under construction and, at the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, there were about thirty of them. This research project is based on the hypothesis that a better understanding of the phenomenon becomes possible when it is replaced within the dual historical tradition of theatre and architecture. This approach, both synchronic and diachronic, based on a multidisciplinary approach, aims to uncover the specific forms of creation of these scenic places while emphasizing the association with the totalitarian ideological policy of National Socialism.

Concentration camp scholarship has been impacted by an ‘island syndrome’: most research limits itself to one site, focuses either on its life or afterlife, and overlooks interactions among functionaries, inmates, and local people. Central themes connected to the camps thus remain shrouded in popular misconceptions. This study breaks with historiographical orthodoxies and addresses common confusions through a new framework. Drawing on Ebensee and the Loiblpass, two forced labour outposts of the Mauthausen complex, it presents the first integrated account of the divergent factors that shaped the legacies of these sites and the fates of their subjects. A focus on Ebensee shows how gravely the local bureaucracy, relief workers, and US Army impacted on the early postwar lives of former camp inmates. Victim groups were marginalised by local and Allied actors precisely because of a broad awareness and continued survivor presence. The Loiblpass figured less prominently in the postwar lives of its surrounding communities. At the core of postwar views lay pre-1945 experiences. Living in an epicentre of territorial struggles, Loibl Valley inhabitants did not externalise a strong political agenda and instead communicated a binary ‘selective association process’. The memory of the camp prompted a positive association in socioeconomic terms; political allusions provoked a relativizing of brutality and a claim to personal victimhood. The local context and postwar dimension constitute a missing link in our understanding of these sites, their neighbouring communities, and the early postwar period more broadly. While the causal relationship between a social reintegration of Nazis and a re-marginalisation of genuine victims has thus far been viewed chiefly through the lens of federal politics, this development was already long under way—aided by all local actors—when amnesty laws encouraging the rehabilitation of former National Socialists came into effect; national and Allied policy decisions in the wake of the burgeoning Cold War only further catalysed this development from 1947 onwards.

This interpretative study attempts to ascertain why the Nazi movement gained the support of German voters by examining its persuasive strategies. The growth of the movement was divided into three periods. In each period, the verbal and non-verbal rhetorical strategies were explored. It was found that the movement's success stemmed largely from the display of party unity, the display of power through the Storm Troopers' use of violent street rhetoric, and the spread of Nazi ideals through speeches at meetings, on tours, and especially at the Nuremberg Party Rallies. Their communication capitalized skillfully on the conditions in Germany between 1919 and 1933. Hopefully, the findings of this study add to our knowledge of the role of rhetoric in creating mass movements.

Zugl.: Regensburg, Univ., Diss. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 158-164).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Bochum, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 402-436) and index.

This dissertation examines the implementation of the SS’s Greater Germanic idea in the Danish border region of South Jutland. Its focus is on how Danish and ethnic German (volksdeutsche) national socialists, organised in their respective Nazi parties, dealt with the SS’s crusade on behalf of a supranational racial vision. The study traces why the two groups reacted so negatively to the SS’s ideology - despite the SS’s power, despite the Greater Germanic promise of high racial prestige, and despite shared service in “Germanic” units of the Waffen-SS. The SS’s attempts to use a race-based ideology to overcome the disputes that divided South Jutland’s two Nazi parties ran aground on fundamentally nationalist identities. For most members of the German minority, the Greater Germanic ideology was a threat. The German minority hoped for border revision; to acknowledge Danes as racial equals would endanger their political goals. Nor were Danish Nazis more enthusiastic. To be sure, the SS’s vision did provide an ideological weapon in the fight against demands for border vision. But the potential imperialism of the Greater Germanic idea worried those who prized continued Danish sovereignty. After all, the first hope of the Danish Nazis was to rule an independent national-socialist Danish state. The study makes it clear, however, that the fate of the Greater Germanic idea cannot be understood simply in terms of Realpolitik. Rather, the conflicts between the SS and its collaboration partners must also be understood as a clash between racial and völkisch concepts of community. The SS's vision of a Greater Germanic Reich based on ideologies of race clashed with the German-minority and Danish national-socialist commitment to Volk-based nationalism. Despite their strong commitment to Nazi ideologies, both collaboration partners found the SS’s racial community “unimaginable”.

No description available.

Films and their images function to disperse representations of the body that encourage viewers to adopt or reject certain represented appearances and actions. Using this proposition, this thesis explores how notions of the body are visualized in filmic images, such as film posters and photographs used for promotional purposes. In particular, this thesis focuses on how German identities from the end of the Weimar Republic through to the early years of the Third Reich were represented in filmic images. This paper questions whether the introduction of Nazi ideals and the establishment of a state controlled film industry led to new representations of the body in filmic images or whether there is continuity between these images and those of the Weimar Republic. Exploring which bodies, taking into account representations of race. class, gender and sexuality, were privileged and which were vilified in filmic images gives one an idea of how bodies were encouraged to conform socially in the years leading up to and during the Third Reich.

Zugl.: Mannheim, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2005

Zugl.: Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 2006