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This thesis analyses the uses of the concept of a Leistungsgesellschaft to explore the breaks and continuities in the transition from Third Reich to Federal Republic as well as within the post-war era. Between 1933 and 1975, the 'achieving society' and the concept of Leistung became ever more widely used and criticised. The individual in the National Socialist period was pressured to achieve in the name of a politically and racially defined commonweal, or risk exclusion from the national community. By contrast, the post-war period witnessed a shift as Ordoliberalism emphasised the individual opportunity a focus on performance in a competitive market generated. However, Ordoliberal theory had a limited impact on policy, also failing to overcome the tension between endorsing individual achievement and the developing welfare state. As part of an increasingly international debate, sociologists assessed how far the opportunities of the market actually extended and gauged the consequences of the Leistungsgesellschaft. These discussions show the active role of researchers in moulding a mental map of a highly advanced 'West'. At the same time, a pattern that coheres with the model of the 'long sixties' is also present in these debates. The increasingly critical tone adopted by sociologists predated and prepared the way for the more radical ideas of the New Left. By the mid-1960s, activists and academics were highlighting the repressive emotional and psychological consequences of stressing achievement, prompting conservative efforts to defend Leistung. On the whole, a gendered line of exclusion and a trend towards Verwissenschaftlichung are the most striking continuities between 1933 and 1975. Racialized understandings of achievement are reframed in the context of debates about the 'underdeveloped' states. The thesis as a whole paints a picture of an increasing individualisation of Leistung as well as growing focus on the pressures and problems inherent in endorsing achievement.

The goal of this thesis is to find out if racial and antisemitic propaganda had an impact on Czech people. This goal was realised on antisemitic programmes which were aired in Český rozhlas during the years 1938- 1945. Then I made interviews with people who lived during Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia and who already participated on my previous research. The interviews helped to find out whether the antisemitic propaganda had any impact on the people and if it had, to what extent.

Jürgen Habermas is a preeminent European intellectual who was a German teenager during World War II. He was profoundly impacted by the devastation wrought by the Nazi regime and the social regression that it embodied. He dedicated his intellectual efforts to studying philosophy and developing a theoretical framework that demonstrates how collaboration and unimpeded dialogue are consistent with the promotion of human interest and how there exist quasi-transcendent protections against threats to modern social progress. This thesis explicates how the Third Reich, from Habermas's perspective, exemplifies violence to Habermas's model of communicative action and how we can learn to better protect it, thereby stimulating more healthy social development.

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This dissertation examines the roles played by Catholicism on the German Home Front during the Second World War. It analyses to what extent German Catholics supported their nation’s war effort, and how they sought to reconcile their religious convictions with Nazism and its conduct of the conflict. The thesis examines the oscillations of morale within the Catholic ‘milieu’ during the war years, and analyses its responses to German defeats from 1943 onwards. In addition to these overtly political themes, this dissertation analyses the social history of religion during this period. In order to focus its analysis on a manageable scale, this thesis focuses on the experiences and activities of Catholics from the Rhineland and Westphalia. Its concluding chapter uses its findings concerning Catholicism during the war years to revise current understandings of the formation of a conservative ‘restoration’ in West Germany after May 1945. Many existing works concerning German Catholicism during this period provide a monolithic portrayal of the confession’s internal coherence, and domination of its adherents’ political beliefs. This thesis, by contrast, argues that profound divides existed amongst German Catholics during the Second World War. Younger clergymen were frequently more sympathetic to völkisch nationalism than their older colleagues, and desired a more pro-Nazi stance from the German episcopate. The Catholic laity, moreover, was similarly often frustrated by the conservatism of episcopal Neo-Scholastic theology, and wanted sermons and pastoral letters that would endorse the German war effort in more unambiguous terms. The war years witnessed a complex negotiation of religious, political and national loyalties amongst Catholic communities, ensuring the thesis provides a nuanced picture of the confession’s place in German society during this period.

Thesis advisor: Devin Pendas / Ernst Juenger lived through almost the entire 20th century. This longevity has placed him at the center of many of the most defining moments of modern German history. It is not, however, simply his longevity but his attitudes that have caused such a controversy to grow up around him. A staunch nationalist and one might venture to say, war-monger, during the First World War and a virulent enemy of the Weimar Republic, many historians have classified him as a Nazi author. This thesis explores the relationsihp of Ernst Juenger to the National Socialists in the context of his writing and political leanings between the First World War and the end of the Second. Without understanding the integral differences between his ideology and that of the NSDAP (namely their divergence on the issues of racial purity, parliamentarianism, communism, the use of power, and the position of art)one cannot appreciate his place in history and his perspective on Germany. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2006. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: John Michalczyk / Although the National Socialists' ultimate intentions in regard to religion were concealed from the pubic under layers of political rhetoric, their objectives were nonetheless clear. The National Socialists sought the destruction of the Christian religion, whose teachings and values were seen as inimical to those of the State, and the establishment of a Reichskirche that would preach the doctrines of National Socialism. The German government during the Third Reich was a totalitarian regime, but there was one matter in which the Nazi Party did not have carte blanche, religion, which made it an intrinsic threat to the authority of the State. Many Nazi officials saw Christianity as the inherent and irreconcilable enemy of National Socialism, but they knew they risked losing the support of the German people if they instantly dissolved the Christian Churches. Instead of vehemently attacking the Christian confessions the way they did in Poland, in Germany the National Socialists set up a mirage of support for and acceptance of religious institutions, all while working to undermine the Christian tradition that they considered of greatest detriment and danger to their State. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This thesis investigates the background, activities, and motivations of German women who provided administrative support for Nazi institutions and agencies of the Third Reich. It compares women who specifically chose to serve the Nazi cause in voluntary roles with those who took on such work as a progression of established careers. Using a variety of sources, including post-war testimony in criminal cases, it shows how much they knew about the repressive and genocidal aspects of the regime and evaluates the role that ideology, as against other factors, played in their loyalty to their employers. Secretaries, SS-Helferinnen (SS female auxiliaries) and Nachrichtenhelferinnen des Heeres (female communication auxiliaries of the army) held similar jobs: taking dictation, answering telephones, and sending telegrams. Yet their backgrounds differed markedly. While secretaries were habitually recruited on the basis of their prior experience and competencies, the Helferinnen predominantly volunteered, sometimes motivated by ideology and the opportunity to serve their country, sometimes enticed by the prospect of foreign travel or the lure of the uniform. The thesis sheds light on these women's backgrounds: their social status, education, career patterns. It seeks to explain the situations and motives that propelled them into their positions and explores what they knew about the true nature of their work. These women often had access to information about the administration of genocide and are a relatively untapped resource. Their recollections shed light on the lives and work of their superiors, the mundane tasks that contributed to the displacement, deportation and death of millions of people across Europe, and the extent to which information about these atrocities was communicated and comprehended. Attention is paid to the specific role played by gender amongst perpetrators of the Holocaust. The question of how gender intersected with National Socialism, repression, atrocity and genocide forms the conceptual thread linking the separate chapters on these three groups of women who had varied backgrounds and degrees of initial commitment to Nazi ideology.

While much is known about the polarities of the Protestant 'Church Struggle' (Kirchenkampf) in Nazi Germany, comparatively little is understood about the complex and collective dynamic of the Landesbischöfe of the only three 'intact' churches to escape incorporation into the Nazi-dominated Reichskirche. Traditionally, literature on the Kirchenkampf has taken a simplistic 'good-versus-evil' approach to the conflict and, arguably inspired by a moral need to come to terms with the less-than-glorious past of the German Protestant Church, has been unable to locate the Landesbischöfe of the 'intact' churches neatly within the conventional historiographical paradigm. By taking as its subject Landesbischöfe August Marahrens of Hanover, Hans Meiser of Bavaria and Theophil Wurm of Wûrttemberg, this dissertation examines the contribution to the Kirchenkampf of three men, who, to ensure the continued existence of German Protestantism in the Third Reich, were ultimately forced to find ways to respond to National Socialism that lay somewhere between the parameters of defiance and compliance. In order to demonstrate the collective contribution of the Landesbischöfe to maintaining the status of the German Protestant Church amidst heightening Nazi tyranny, this dissertation traces how, with reference to external personal, political and socio-cultural conditions, the bishops moved from a seeming commonality of cause to display increasingly varied responses to the manifestations of both political and ecclesiastical National Socialism. By tracing the development of their moderate but nonetheless disparate positions, this dissertation not only questions the traditional historiographical assumptions that Landesbischöfe Marahrens, Meiser and Wurm failed to resist National Socialism effectively or were, at best, collectively neutral in the conflict, but also seeks to delineate, for the first time, the crucial parts played by each of the Landesbischöfe during three distinct stages of the Kirchenkampf. In devoting each of its three central chapters to a particular phase in the conflict, this dissertation demonstrates how each of the Landesbischöfe in turn steered the 'intact' ensemble through the Third Reich as a modest yet effective force of opposition to Nazi despotism. Seen as a whole, this investigation ultimately demonstrates how, through their respective turns at national Church leadership, Landesbischöfe Marahrens, Meiser and Wurm did not undermine the wider Church resistance effort but, rather, saved the Church from subjugation to Nazism more effectively than would have been possible had they stood alone.